


The Frost Queen

by misreall



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, Sneedronningen | The Snow Queen - Hans Christian Andersen, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Awkward Kissing, Bath Sex, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Every kind of Kissing, F/M, Friends to Enemies, Friends to Lovers, Hair Kink, Hate Sex, Heartbreak, Horn Stimulation, Horn kink, Infidelity, Kissing, Marking, Master/pet sort of, Oral Sex, Road Trips, Rough Sex, Scent Marking, Sex, Slow Burn, Surprise Kissing, Tender Sex, True Love, True Love's Kiss, Vaginal Fingering, collaring, dub con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2020-06-23 12:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19701373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: When Loki and Aere were children they became friends, and when they grew up, more.  Then one day a strange woman came looking for him with stories of thrones and crowns and Loki's heart grew cold.





	1. Some Are Created For Beauty, and Some For Use

Aere could not remember much about Midgard, having been so little when she had been taken from there. From time to time something - a scent of warmth from inside of a house on a cold day, the flash of a red and black bird’s wing at the corner of her eye, the feeling of muddy earth under her fingers - would cause the tiny corner of memory to scratch at her only to quickly disappear.

The only thing she could remember, truly remember that she knew was from Midgard, from her home, was a voice. Someone had sung to her, silly songs whose words she could not recall, but that she knew were about cats and the sun and the sea and old ladies doing jigs. They had sung to her and twirled her, sung and twirled, until they were out of breath from laughing. The singer had an old woman’s face, but a girl’s voice, and she sang when bent in the field, when stirring a pot, when sorting grain.

Now and then, Aere would hum a tune from Midgard, forever feeling as if one of the songs was about to fall from the tip of her mind onto her tongue, though they never did.

Once, not long after she came into Queen Frigga’s household, she had asked Diole about that Realm.

“What is Midgard like?” They had been making small cakes with walnuts in rose jam on top. Aere had been too little help with the mixing or baking, but the elf allowed her to place a dollop of the sweet mix on top of each one. 

Irascible as ever, Diole had shaken her head, “I’ve never been there! Sounds dreadful. Everyone dying in just a few decades, no magic, no harmony, too much weather. You’re a lucky child, remember that.”

Aere didn’t remember anyone dying. She remembered snow, and sitting by a fire outside, where lumps of earth and greens burned and smelled bad. She remembered sleeping on a bed with lots of other people and her breath smoking the air because it was so cold. Then she remembered screaming and more fire and being lifted by the back of her dress by someone so tall that she thought if she fell she would break into pieces, which made her remember that one time she had knocked a mug from a table and it had broken and someone had slapped her hand for it.

Then she remembered nothing until she woke up on a skycraft, cuddled on Diole’s lap - the only time she such a thing ever happened with the peppery elf - beside the most beautiful woman in all of the Realms. A tall, golden goddess who had smiled at her gently, touching her cheek, “You have such pretty, bright eyes. Like tea poured into a big white cup. What is your name, my darling little one?” 

Her voice was lovely and kind and Aere had shaken her head and cried and cried. She could only recall one word from her home, and so they called her by a word that sounded like it, in the language of Queen Frigga’s home Realm. 

The next morning she woke on a little bed in Diole’s room in the Queen’s quarters on Asgard and started to learn things to fill up the spaces within her where memories should be but weren’t.

She learned the AllTongue. She learned to bake plain brown bread, then biscuits with petals pressed into the dough, then delicate cakes that made men as giddy as wine. She learned to mend using silk thread touched with magic to make it unbreakable. She learned to garden herbs, first those used for cooking, then those for scents, and finally for those for magic. She learned to read and then to write languages, including those used for spells by the Queen, and runes of power, though neither sparked to life for her, though never any from Midgard. She learned to keep things neat, including herself. She learned how to pour mead without spilling, even from heavy stone jars into the tallest golden goblets. She never learned to curb her tongue, for which Diole blamed Frigga, the old elf being the only creature privileged to scold the Goddess.

“You laugh when she speaks, so she will keep speaking,” Diole had scowled one day when the Queen had visited them in the kitchen at her estate on Vanaheim. They lived there most of the time, attending Frigga in Asgard only on certain special occasions. 

Frigga had just cupped Aere’s cheek, “It would be hypocritical to break her of the habit when I foster it in Loki.”

“Bah! A prince can do as he pleases, and sass as he likes. That girl needs to learn to hold her tongue, to be seen and not heard. A servant should be subservient,” Diole said, slicing pears, showing Aere how to hold the knife so she could cut quickly, so the pieces would be of a size, and she would not harm herself.

Frigga had raised an eyebrow at the elf, with a haughty lift to her chin, and Diole had grumbled into silence. 

Aere had tried to learn how to lift her eyebrow and her chin just so, standing on a chair so she could look into the great, silver framed mirror.

For the first time she saw herself clearly, and not just as ghost reflected in glass or a wavery girl drowned in a pond. Her face was rather round yet, for she was still small, with a stubborn chin and eyes the same color as her hair, and nothing like the graceful Vanir or the noble Aesir or the delicate elf who raised her. 

She raised her eyebrow, and lifted her chin, meeting her own eyes.

Then she had laughed at herself so hard she fell off the chair, knocking the mirror from the wall so it shattered, and was punished by Diole for making a mess. It had taken ages to sweep the room and even so for years to come they would be finding pieces of mirror in strange places about the estate, some of them seemingly impossible.

Diole and the Queen learned that Aere could sing, so some nights when she attended Frigga in her rooms she would perform for her and her ladies in waiting, her little girl voice piping high into the air. Songs from Vanaheim or Elfheimr, never Asgard, whose songs were all of war, or Midgard, whose songs seemed all forgotten. 

At sometime in the midst of all of these years and years of learning and singing, though not in the first year she was with Diole, but possibly in the second, after her supper she was given a bowl of apple slices in lavender honey. Afterward Aere slept for a long time and when she woke the days and nights around her moved differently and until she grew used to it her little legs were unsteady beneath her, as if she were walking sideways up a hill, ready to fall over and roll down. 

Then one day she was upright again and the long days and nights seemed normal enough. 

Also, some time in the midst of those years, though after the dish of apples in honey, she met the Princes. 

Loki walked beside Thor, holding his head up, trying not to cry, because he was too old for such things now. He would not shame his father by showing how badly he did not want to leave Asgard, to go with his mother to Vanaheim. And he would not embarrass himself, either, and maybe more importantly. Yet the unfairness rankled at him.

Thor was going too, but only for a short visit, then he would be returning to Asgard for the harvest season where father would teach him how to hunt the ravenous boars that harassed the farmers during this time of year. 

When Thor had begged that Loki come with them, Odin’s eye had flashed, “No, my son. Your brother is yet too young for such a task. In a year, or perhaps two, he will be joining us and then I will be proud to have you both riding out with me.”

Thor had made fists, punching downward and nothing, whining, “But Loki rides -”

Then the AllFather’s eye had flashed again, and even his precious firstborn knew to fall silent. 

So now the brothers walked side by side on the bridge leading to Heimdal’s watch, their parents before them, whilst on either side of the royal progress, the populace assembled and cheering goodbye to the Queen and the little princes. 

As ever, the golden chamber where the sharp-eyed sentinel god waited intrigued Loki. The magical mechanism by which the Bifrost was summoned was ancient and he often wished he could sneak up to it and look within. 

Sadly, there was no sneaking where Heimdal was concerned, not even for Loki who was ever the best at all matters involving hiding or eluding, even though he was the youngest, the baby of all, or so he thought glumly.

His parents spoke to Heimdal about some matter that sounded important and was no doubt boring. Thor tried once or twice to wander away, only to be grasped firmly by the back of his tunic by the Einherjar that had been assigned to do just that. At last, the King crouched before the two of them.

With a voice full of command and a little tenderness, Odin spoke to his sons. “You must behave yourself as both Princes of Asgard and dutiful sons whilst on Vanaheim. They are our oldest allies and your mother’s people, so they shall show you deference by virtue of your birth, but respect is a thing you must earn. Thor,” he turned slightly to his eldest, tapping him lightly on the chest with one finger, “you shall be responsible for your brother. And Loki,” now he turned to him, and Loki felt his heart beat very hard as he tried to stand taller, “you shall look after your mother for me. It has not been since the war that we will have been apart for so long. I am trusting you with my most precious jewel.”

Loki looked at his mother, who was smiling down at the three of them, for once not with a little indulgence at someone’s recent misbehavior, and he wished that nothing might change from that moment on. Yet it was not to be, and too soon the Bifrost was called in a blaze of perfect, rainbowed lights, and a sound that was the sound of every adventure’s beginning. 

They walked to the edge of the great skyroad. Loki lined the toes of his boots with the very start of the bridge, knowing not to even touch and inch of it until they were told to, and held his breath. 

Despite wanting to show his father how grown he was, Loki reached out for Thor’s hand which was already held out and waiting for him. “Come on, brother. We will step together.”

Loki looked to Frigga who nodded. It was time.

With that one step, the universe roared past them, a blur of gold and color and sound and feelings for which he had no words yet and then they were in a different Realm, in a garden, where the old elf who had served Frigga from when she had been a girl waited to greet their mother.

From behind Diole, a very small girl, smaller even than Loki, with brown braids and brown eyes, and wearing a peasant’s green dress with a plain apron, looked at them. 

At first, he thought she was shy, but then he could see her peeping up at Diole to be certain that the elf was not looking. The girl smiled at them and waved.

Thor waved back.

Loki scoffed a bit and raised his chin and looked away, not wanting to give countenance to a mere servant. It was something he had heard Amora and Lorelei’s father say to them when the three of them had been caught playing with the daughter of the head gardener at the palace on Asgard. They had ignored her after that, and she had cried.

This girl laughed.

The girl, whose name was Aere and who came from a very far, very unimportant Realm on which she had been  _ extremely _ unimportant from what Diole had said about her, laughed at Loki many times over the next few weeks. Mostly when Thor would invite her to play with them and Loki would remind his brother that as Princes it was not appropriate for them to play with a servant.

He expected her to get into trouble for daring to laugh at a Prince of Asgard, as she would have were they on Asgard, yet it never happened. Diole would sometimes give her the sharp side of her tongue for not finishing her work or for doing it poorly, but never for being disrespectful. 

She would run back on her short, little legs and finish her work and do it better and then join Thor. 

Though his brother played with her the girl was too small for any good games, be they races or wrestling or quoits, and she did not know the rules for  _ Hnefatafl _ . The one time Loki had finally relented at her whining to be taught he had no sooner set up the board on the table in his mother’s great library than Diole had called her to come pluck chickens, after which she did not come back. 

Loki was mad. He had even gone to the trouble of stacking up many large books so she would be able to sit on a chair and see the table.

Another time, he had thought the three of them could play  _ bjarn-dýr byrdh _ , since the girl could be in the middle, yet she had been unwilling. Instead, she had said  _ he _ should be in the middle, laughing again. Then Frigga had caught wind of the plan and had given it a firm no, even to Thor’s pleading.

Most of those days when not studying magic with his mother or of their all visiting the market in the town, Loki would sit at one of the chairs in the garden with a book whilst she and Thor ran about, yelling and tossing sticks at each other in some game that they had made up themselves whose main rule seemed to be that whoever hit the other one on top of the head without getting caught by the Queen or one of her ladies maids won. 

Thor was much better at the hitting, but the girl was far better at not being caught, laughing always. Even though she was a servant, and would be heating the water for their baths later, and serving them at dinner before she ate herself, and would have to clean the dirt that Thor was getting on his clothing playing with her.

From time to time Loki considered joining them, as he  _ knew _ would be very good at both parts of the game yet he never did. 

The only time the three of them did anything together for long was at night when Frigga would sit by the fire and tell stories. They would cross their legs and stare at her as the fire made her gestures and expressions larger and more vivid, making the stories seem as if they were happening before them. At times she would use her magic and the smoke and the flames would become people, or horses, or ships, or swords. 

What stories they were! Stories of Vanaheim and its handsome princes and beautiful princesses, who were as clever as they were lovely. Of Asgard’s great warriors and their victories. Of the crafty dwarves and dangerous fire giants. Of the cold planes of Helheim and the even colder and crueler mountains of Jotunheim. 

She even told stories about Midgard. Of their strange gods, of which Loki like Hermes the best, and their heroes, whose exploits were not as magnificent as those of the other Realms, yet were always more dangerous. 

Thor would sit between him and the girl, and would sometimes lean towards Loki and whisper what he thought would happen next, or towards the girl, saying what  _ he _ would have done in the place of the hero, that would have been a much better idea. 

When he talked the girl would often look over at Loki and he was certain she disliked the interruptions as much as he did. Unless it was a scary part, then he could see she was happy to have Thor claim he would kill any troll that dared to attack them!

Often, after he had spoken too much, Frigga would shush Thor, making him move so he had to sit on a chair beside Diole. When Thor was gone the girl would move a little closer to Loki, but he would not look at her.

From the corner of his eye, Loki would see Thor squirm and shift, bored beside the elf until it was time to go to bed.

Though he knew it wasn’t true, Loki was very angry that his brother was  _ always  _ playing with the servant. He even complained to his mother about it once, when it was not long before Thor left. 

“It is hardly always, Loki. You and he went riding yesterday afternoon, and before that, the three of us took the leyline train to the forest to picnic. Yesterday was a visit to my father’s palace, where I remember a certain prince eating a great many slices of venison pie.” She tenderly stroked his face, “I know you want your brother all to yourself but Aere is probably very lonely here, too, being the only-”

Then she stopped, seeing a wet gleam in his eye.

Frigga gathered him to her and though he was big he wrapped himself in her mantle that smelled of linden trees in the sun. “I want her to be my friend and laugh. And if she plays with me after Thor leaves it means she is only playing with me because he’s not here!” 

He sobbed.

Frigga rocked him, “Then perhaps you should tell Aere that you wish to be friends, rather than scowling when she plays with Thor?”

He sobbed harder, shaking his head, not able to find the words. He wanted Aere to come to him. To want him to be her friend first because then he would know that it was true. 

“Do you know Aere cries most nights?” Frigga’s voice was soft.

The certainty that for once his mother was wrong stopped Loki’s tears like a plug in a cask. He shook his head, “No. She laughs  _ all of the time _ !”

She wiped his eyes with the end of her mantle, “When she sleeps she sometimes cries. She cannot remember her mother, nor her father, yet I know she calls from them when she sleeps in a language she cannot remember either. She is very, very alone. I know that you, my sweet boy, can understand what it is to be alone. You are-”

For a moment Frigga hesitated, in her words, and then spoke. Somehow Loki sensed that her words were not the ones she had started to say before.

“As when Thor has gone to play with is friends, or to be with his father learning what it will be to be king one day, and you must wait behind?”

Loki looked at his mother’s face, and nodded.

That night, when Frigga told stories and Thor was banished to sit with Diole, Loki moved closer to Aere before she could move closer to him and whispered, “I cannot kill a troll if one comes here. Yet. But I can trick it into running away. All I need is a barking dog, and a piece of vellum, and a very loud horn.” Then he scowled, “Except we do not  _ have _ a dog.”

Aere looked at him, her eyes very serious and large, and then she leaned her head back and barked just like a great, fierce curr, causing Diole t’sk in annoyance and Frigga to stop her enchantment, so the figures of flame fell back onto the wood in the fireplace, sending sparks up the chimney.

Loki laughed.


	2. Because she could not go near all these wonderful things, she longed for them all the more.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Aere grow up, just a little bit.

“Go higher!” 

“I cannot! The branches are too far apart!”

“But if you fly from that low it won’t be as fun! Oh, ok, just jump from there then! Diole will be mad if I don’t finish picking the cherries soon!” Aere’s voice piped up to Loki from where he sat in one of the whispering Dodona trees in the arboretum that made up a quarter of the Queen’s Vanaheim estate. 

It had been days before when sitting in this tree, eating cakes that Aere had been forced to learn to make, that he had told her that because he could do magic he could fly down from the tree with the right spell.

She had not believed him. 

It had been astonishing - a word he had just learned and liked very much. Everyone always believed Loki, no matter what he said. So now he had to show her that he could so then she would believe him all of the time as well.

He nodded seriously to himself, looking down at where his admittedly rather short legs in his special cross-tied green boots waved back and forth, so he could see her standing so much farther beneath him than he had realized she was. He had climbed quite high, he thought, more than far enough to fly.

Carefully standing on the not very wide branch, Loki closed his eyes to help remember the cantrip of flight he had copied so carefully from one of his mother’s books back on Asgard. One of the books on the shelf she believed he could not get to.

Loki snorted at the idea of  _ that _ . 

For some reason, his mother had not wanted to teach flight to him, but it seemed simple enough. He was  _ nearly  _ positive he could pronounce each and all of the words, and that he had copied them all correctly, in spite of the rather old calligraphy style they had been written in... 

Opening his eyes, it somehow seemed that the ground was even further below than before. He could barely make out the round of Aere’s face, though he could see her plaits swinging as she hopped up and down in excitement, like a hound’s tail switching with eagerness. Far more eager than she had ever seemed to be to play with Thor.

He was certain he remembered the cantrip.

Beside her was a blanket covered in a layer of silk and velvet pillows they had taken from all of the divans in the west receiving room since it was never used for anything important anyway. The bundle had been so large the two of them had to each take part so they could drag it through the flower garden, past terraces where tea grew, and across a horse field. 

They were all rather dirty now, and Aere had worried that she might get into trouble for that, though Loki had argued, “Would we not both be in more trouble if I fell and dirtied my clothing?” She had looked at him very seriously for a moment and then nodded and agreed that he was right.

“I am about to begin the cantrip. For this I shall require total silence on your part,” he said, intoning the words with the majesty of his father making a great proclamation.

“BUT I WASN’T SAYING ANYTHING!” Aere yelled up at him.

“IT WAS TO MAKE SURE YOU DIDN’T!”

He closed his eyes again, picturing the words on the page. 

“ _ Fjaðrhamr hlífa _ -” he started to intone, feeling that intoning was the right choice for the spell as well as the proclamation he had made to his subjects - Aere - before.

Eyes closed, Loki began to intone, but as soon as he spoke the second word he realized he could not recall if the word was  _ hlífar _ or  _ hlífat _ , and he had a feeling that it was rather important that he get it right. 

He peeked an eye open. Aere was dancing back and forth on her toes, her hands squeezed together, her eyes big even at this distance. 

It was their last day together before he and his mother returned to Asgard. In the months since Thor had left he and Aere had played to together - or as Diole had put it ‘terrorized the populace’ - each waking moment that she had not been working nor he studying. 

He told her stories, using the little enchantments that he had already learned to make the shadows into puppet characters. Some of them he had learned to make rather large and fearsome and the two of them would hide whilst he sent them amongst the estate workers in the fields. Often he would have to put his hands over Aere’s mouth to keep her from laughing.

She taught him hide and go seek, which meant she showed him all of the best hiding places for when Diole was looking for her to help with the cooking, which  _ she _ hated because it was boring. Or when Frigga was looking for him to take a bath, which _ he _ hated. Magic kept one just as clean and it was much faster and did not leave one with water in one’s ears. 

He showed her how to play  _ Hnefatafl,  _ finally, and she showed him how to play tagelharpa and the rebec, though she could not show him how to sing. 

Loki begged permission to take one of the ponies into town, and Aere would ride behind him, her arms around him, trying to get him to go faster, and he promised that one day he would bring a proper horse from Asgard and they ride fleeter than any kestrel took wing.

Aere wheedled Diole into making them cakes and letting them go onto the roof to eat them as long as they promised not to sit on the edge.

They gathered every dog they could find to have races.

They went through the attics and dressed in all of the gowns stored there by generations of the Queen’s family.

They looked up bad words in different languages and dared each other to use them.

They ran through the tea terraces, stealing leaves to chew, and through the fruit fields, grabbing handfuls of pears, ripe or not, and then would come back to the house with stomach aches, or fall asleep under the hedges so everyone would have to stop work and try and find them. Diole would punish Aere, making her work in the kitchen all of the next day, and go to bed early, and Frigga would lecture Loki on the unfairness of getting others into trouble when his own punishment would not be so great.

Yet the first moment she was free, Aere would find him wherever he was, and both would quickly forget the trouble they had just gotten out of.

Today was the last day. He promised he would fly.

It was probably  _ hlífar,  _ he thought to himself. Closing his eyes, he started again, this time with real confidence.

Years later, when the memory of the epic and painful punishment he received that afternoon had started to sting less, Loki acknowledged to himself that if Diole had not come looking for Aere to get her back to work at that moment he could possibly have killed himself, Aesir or no. Yet at the time, and even afterward, he held a grudge against the old woman for daring to lay hands on a prince. 

And for embarrassing him in front of Aere.

It was also years later when he realized that Aere’s punishment was probably even more severe than his own. When he saw her the next morning, serving the Queen and him breakfast before the Bifrost was summoned, her eyes were red and swollen, and she would not look at him and ran back to the kitchen. 

After the meal, Frigga took Loki to the main hall where they both said goodbye to the servants and then the workers who were assembled outside. The Queen said many things, and sometimes the people laughed or nodded, but Loki did not hear or care because Aere was not there and he did not see her.

Finally, his mother’s hand upon his shoulder, he thanked everyone and they walked to the clearing where the Bifrost would arrive when he heard feet running through the white gravel. 

He turned just in time for Aere to barrel into him. Only his Aesir sturdiness kept them from falling over. She thrust something into his hand and whispered, “I am sorry that I almost let you do something bad and you got into trouble. I don’t want you to go.”

He whispered back, “I never get to do what I want. Someday I will. And then I can stay.”

Then she curtsied to the Queen and went back to stand next to the furious Diole.

That night, in his bed, Loki looked at what she had put in his hand. It was a drawing, a rather bad one, of the two of them eating the little cakes that Aere hated to bake, but that he loved to eat. 

Wrapped in it was one of the cakes. He ate it carefully.

It was years before Loki and Thor came again with Her Majesty to Vanaheim. Once or twice, when her letters were smaller and neater, Aere had written letters to Loki, asking Diole to put them with the reports she sent to the Queen on the workings of the estate. 

The first one Loki had responded to with a note written on very thick fine paper bordered with real gold, thanking her for her note. She kept it in the small box under her bed where she kept the few things that were truly hers - a dark blue stone that was flat on one side that she had found in the forest, two little wooden dolls that had been carved by the stable master. She had painted them badly, though most of that had long rubbed off. Most importantly, a bit of ribbon that the Queen had told her had been in her hair when she was little, and had probably come from Midgard with her.

It was rather worn and no longer any particular color, but Aere liked to think it might have been green, which was her favorite.

Again, when the Royal Family were expected to arrive the servants and workers of the estate were gathered before the entrance to the house. This time Aere was to stand with Diole rather than behind her, as she now had an official position as under-maid to the steward of the household. 

Which sounded rather grand to her, though she knew it simply meant she did whatever Diole told her to, as she ever had, but now she received money for it. Or she was told she did. She never actually saw most of it, save for a coin given now and then to buy herself a treat on market day. The rest was being kept for her.

Aere tried to pretend that she wasn’t excited. Or nervous. 

She smoothed down her best apron over her new skirt and checked again that her shoes were clean and not scuffed. 

“Stop fidgeting, girl,” Diole said without looking at her. “A servant should have what dignity they can, and right now you are as dignified as a child playing in a pigsty.” She stopped and considered for a minute, “That the pig has left because she’s embarrassed.”

Aere stilled her hands, and then there was a wind from across the places between the stars, roaring so loud and so wonderful, just like she remembered it from those years before, and a tunnel of every color struck the ground like a soft fist, leaving behind a burning sigal, the Queen, Prince Thor, and Loki.

Because she had to stay looking straight ahead she only saw the briefest blur of black hair and golden before being sent back to work.

Neither of them had looked at her, but she knew that they could not. None of them were little any longer.

After that time Aere had told to stay in the kitchen, or working in the herb garden, or was forever being sent to run errands off of the estate, or to work where the princes were not. 

Once she helped serve them at a luncheon in the flower garden where certain other local dignitaries were in attendance. She carried in the bread and salt that were presented to the guests before the meal. Loki sat to his mother’s left, Thor to the right. Both of them had grown, gangly legged and armed, looking uncomfortable in their court finery, so hot was it that day. Their faces were strange too, as if they were not quite themselves any longer. Or maybe were not themselves  _ yet _ . 

Whatever that might mean.

Sometimes she thought things like that, and when she said them aloud Diole or the maids or the cook would stop talking for a moment, look at her, and then go back to what they were discussing as if she had not spoken.

Aere wondered what she looked like to them. Smaller than they, she could tell that where they had been once almost the same size they would both not be taller than they were. But what would her face look like to them? Unfinished? Strange? 

After placing the platter of loaves on the table, she bowed as she had been taught, with her head down. Yet when she let her eyes look up she caught a glimpse of Loki’s green eyes and the way his mouth was a thin line as if keeping in a laugh at the sight of her curtsying like any girl would. 

The strange feeling in her stomach and her shoulders that she had had for the days since they had arrived was gone just like that. She straightened and nodded at him as if she were the princess and he the servant. 

It took pure force to not stick her tongue out at him as well. She was too old for such things. It was good enough that he snorted water through his nose.

After, as she cleared the tables, she wondered if he might come looking for her, as she was not allowed to look for him. She wondered it for days, though he never came. Once, when Thor was practicing sword work with a black-haired girl dressed in trews, who had come from Asgard with them and was always around. He had called out and waved for her to come and join them, but Aere had been carrying laundry and by the time it was hung with flowers to scent the cloth and drying in the sun and run back they had been gone.

They were all only to be there a short time before going to the capitol for the  _ Lang-dag _ celebration, after which they would be going straight back to Asgard. 

When she begged to be allowed to play with them Diole told her that the princes were busy with important matters and that she was too old to play when it was time for work.

She then muttered something about someone being a bad influence.

Aere’s stomach hurt not understanding what that meant though it was clearly bad. “I’m not a bad influence!” she yelled, and ran out of the still room where they had been drying herbs, out of the door of the kitchen, fast and heading nowhere.

“I wasn’t talking about you!” Diole shouted after her, “Silly girl!”

Her legs kicked up dust as she hit the fields, workers raising their heads to see her run past and then shake them and return to work. 

When she reached the arboretum there was a snorting noise. Under the whispering trees, a great black horse, larger than any she had ever seen was cropping at clover. Loki was reading a book, his back against a tree trunk. 

He crossed his arms and frowned at her, and for a second looked just like an adult, like a prince. She stopped and started to curtsy. 

He shook his head, “I have been waiting here for you  _ every day _ ! Come on, I have a proper horse now. She can run around the entire world before breakfast.” He rose, dusting himself off. He was dressed very finely, as if for an occasion.

She felt her eyes narrow, “Liar! You’ve been doing… Things! Prince things! Important things!”

“Have I?”

Aere shrieked a little and jumped as Loki’s voice came from behind her. Spinning, she saw the prince standing there, smiling like Diole did whenever she was proven to be correct. 

“What?” she gasped out, looking back and forth between the two Lokis.

The one holding the book laughed and waved his hand. The other bowed neatly to her and then disappeared.

“I told you I could do magic…” 

“Is the horse-”

Loki stroked its mane, “She’s real.”

Aere looked at the beautiful animal. “Where did you get her?” 

“Somewhere. It does not matter. And she was bored anyway. Here,” he climbed easily into the saddle and reached his hand down for her.

Aere considered how much trouble she was already in, and how much more there could be. 

She smiled and took his hand.

On their last day together, a very mere two later, Loki and Aere sat with their backs together next to the river that twisted through the Forest of Aven on the far side of Vanaheim. It was terribly hot, which he did not care for, yet underneath the heavily leaf-burdened limbs of the great trees, the air was cooler. The only sounds were the rubbing of their limbs on each other, the drone of bees doing the last work of the season, the horse whose name he had yet to learn rubbing her back on the bark, and Aere humming as she wove grasses together to keep her hands busy.

She was supposed to be spinning, a craft that she was dreadful at based on her badly pricked fingers, and Loki was to be attending his brother whilst the Queen visited her mother. They both seemed to the eyes of others to be doing just that, and would as long as the illusions he created managed to avoid his mother’s wise gaze. She would see through them in an instant.

Not that he did not wish to see his grandmother, but the old woman always looked at him as if she was trying to remember where he came from and Aere was much more fun. 

Additionally, he had to show Aere the net he had created the last time Thor and he had gone fishing with their father. He had brought in the largest haul and Odin had said he was vastly proud of him.

Thus far, however, the fish of Vanaheim were proving more canny than the fish of Asgard. Or Alfheim.

“Was Alfheim beautiful?” Aere asked, her voice soft and dreamy. “Was Nidavellir amazing?”

“Yes, and yes. Now be quiet. The fish require silence to approach,” he added.

But, of course, she was not. Instead, she turned kneeling, so he sprawled backward, causing the end of the net to fall in the water and float away. Aere leaned over him, her eyes bright, “Do you think your father will ever take you to Midgard?”

Now he was filthy, and his net gone. It was most vexing. He stood, ignoring her, using a bit of very helpful magic to clean himself off, trying to see if his net was still afloat. “Perhaps. But it sounds terribly dull.”

“I’m from Midgard!” She sounded outraged.

“That does not mean it is not dull. Just that it is probably duller since you are here now.” Loki sighed, sadly his net seemed gone, and he had no spell to recover what he could not see.

He’d have to make a better one.

“If you were to go there, would you bring me something?’

Aere’s voice sounded strange and not like itself. It sounded sad. He thought about what his mother had told him about her long ago. Her head was down and she was fiddling further with the little mat she had created from the grasses. “What would you like me to bring you? Should we ever go there.”

She shrugged, still not looking at him, still looking strange.

He did not care for how she looked. 

“Well, I shall just have to take you with me so you can pick your own present…” he offered, turning back to the water. Maybe that shadow under the brink was the end of the net, after all, was the last thing he thought before Aere’s hug barrelled into him, making his new boots slide through the rushes so they both ended in the water. 

The next day, riding to the capitol, back on a rather dull pony, he asked, “Mother, are we to visit Midgard ever on one of the royal progresses? If so I would like to take Aere as one of my servants when we go.”

Frigga did not look at him, “I fear that is not to happen.”

Thor, who was riding a little behind so he could talk with boring Sif, asked, “Why not? It sounds brilliant! So many wars! Fierce monsters! I have heard even the Jotuns raid there from time to time so we could res-”

Frigga spoke over him, “That does sound delightful. Now, are you both ready for your parts of the ceremony? I would not care to have a repeat of your performances at last Midwinter.”

Loki went over his part of the ceremony in his head, whilst the majority of his thoughts were back on Asgard. 

If there would not be an official visit to Midgard with his family then maybe there could be an unofficial one with just Aere….

It took Loki several weeks to find any books on Midgard in the massive library in the palace. Most of them had been removed for some reason from the regular shelves and were in the dark room, where the most powerful and dangerous tomes were kept.

What could be so dangerous about what was known to be the dullest, least powerful of the Nine Realms?

In a great volume written in a shaking hand, he found his answer.

Furious, he stormed as loudly as Thor through the echoing, golden halls, his feet slamming as he ran. He found his parents on their favorite balcony overlooking the courtyard where Thor trained with the Einherjar, where he himself was supposed to be.

They turned to look at him, father irritated, the queen amused.

“My son, perhaps you have an explanation as to-” the king spoke, and for the first time in his life Loki dared to interrupt.

“How was Midgard destroyed?” he demanded, his heart racing sickly at the thought of Aere and what he had promised her.

The AllFather pulled himself to his full height, a stern and unyielding look in his one flashing eye, “As a prince, you must learn to control yourself. As a king, you must learn that in time of war there are always losses. Sometimes great ones.”

Then, taking up Gungnir, he strode away. 

Frigga put a hand upon Loki’s shoulder. “The fall of Midgard is your father’s greatest regret. It pains him to think of it.”

“But Aere does not know,” he felt desperate.

“Diole and I decided it would be for the best if she did not. When the end came the Aesir army managed to gather a few Midgardians to cross the Bifrost with them, and the Jotnar took some as they evacuated, to serve as slaves. Afterward, I took it upon myself to find as many of them as possible. Most had died of exposure on Jotunheim. Aere was but a babe and the warrior who took her sold her almost immediately to… to someone who… It does not matter. I found her before harm could be done. Much harm.”

“She deserves to know,” it came out as a growl, the idea of anyone harming Aere making him feel like his brain was full of knots and thorns.

Frigga shook her head gently, “There are truths that are better not spoken, my darling.”

“And yet I am ever in trouble when called a liar,” he said, pulling away from her hand, running again.

Running all of the way to Heimdal, who refused to take him to Vanaheim.

Running back to the library. 

There were other ways to travel between the worlds. There had to be. 

  
  


  
  



	3. A Cry So Strange it Frightened Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Aere both start to grow up.

When the Queen next came to Vanaheim some years had passed. 

Again Aere stood with the rest of the servants before the house, this time dressed all in black as she was no longer merely Diole’s shadow, but a full under-maid. When she curtsied this time it was perfect, with a straight back and her eyes down. When the Queen walked by on her son’s arm she stopped for a moment before her.

“Rise, Aere. How tall you have grown,” the Queen gently took one of her rough hands between her own soft, elegantly ringed ones. “I still think you as little more than that solemn babe Diole and I brought here those many years ago. A few more decades and you will be a woman grown.”

Thor, who had shot up so now he was more than a head higher than his mother even, smiled and then spoke in a voice that cracked and was by turns deep and then piping, “Maybe when you are free you can show my friends and I the good fishing spots. My brother said that you knew all of them. Volstagg!” He motioned to a mountainously large boy, with a round face and a wide belly, “This is the maid that knows the fishing places! Volstagg is the most avid of fisherman.”

She curtsied to the boy, who blushed a bit, and then one of the others - a sly looking boy - added, “Certainly the most avid of fish-eaters!” Making Volstagg and Thor laugh. The dark-haired girl, Sif, rolled her eyes, while their last companion, a quiet, older boy, clearly from Vanaheim rather than Asgard and who seemed almost a young man by comparison to the others, simply shook his head and smiled at the teasing. 

“Fish are delicious,” Aere blurted out, worried that the large boy might feel bad, though he seemed only amused. “I can eat a net’s full myself. We shall have a fight over them.”

“Mother, can we go today?” Thor asked, in a broken, eager voice. “After all is settled?”

“I am certain that Aere has important duties to see to, as do you, my son,” the Queen said, a soft sternness to her tone. Then she smiled, “But perhaps on the morrow, should you finish your lessons early…Though Aere will probably still have more tasks. Unlike a certain lazy prince, I am sure she is a busy young person.”

Thor and Volstagg and the sly boy all whooped for joy and they, with their more restrained friends, continued on into the house along with Her Majesty.

Aere looked and saw that no one else had arrived with them. “Highness? Your pardon?” she called out towards Thor. Diole gave her glance from the side of her eye that would have frozen anyone less inured to the ice of her gaze. 

Thor turned back, “Yes? Fear not, I will be sure to persuade Mother to let you come as well.”

“Thank you for that,” she curtsied again, not sure if it was the right thing to do but feeling she needed to do something. “I was wondering, is Prince Loki arriving later?”

“My brother shall not be joining us this season. He, er,” Thor rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable, “he’s being punished for meddling.” He said the last word as if were emulating the voice of another. “He was most wroth to be denied a visit.”

“Meddling?” Aere was not sure what exactly that might mean. “What matter of meddling.”

“Simply meddling. That is what Father said. You know Loki, more of the same that he gets up to all of the time. I must go. Mother is looking at me in that _ way _ ,” he said the last part leaning close and in a tone that implied that Aere must know what way that was.

“Meddling…” Aere repeated as the servants went back to their work. “I still don’t understand.”

The old stablemaster, Jorn, snorted and patted her on the shoulder, “Last time that boy was here he meddled the best horse straight out of the Duke of Albir’s estate and meddled it back in again, straight into the great hall. Kvasir alone knows what he’s meddled in the meantime.”

That night Aere wrote Loki a letter, then folded it up and put it away. Since last he had come to Vanaheim she had written him any number of letters but received none in return. At times she thought that perhaps they were not making their way to his hands, as he was a prince and certainly no one would consider a letter from an undermaid to be of much concern.

Then she thought perhaps he simply did not choose to answer, and found her constant questions about what he was doing, and her telling him of the rather dull stories of her life, and her wondering about this and that and the other things of life since no one else had time to listen. Aere found the idea of not writing him rather sad, so now she simply did not send the letters on.

Wrapping a shawl over her nightdress, she climbed into the small window that let moonlight into her narrow, high walled room, and looked at the sky. It was not that she had no one else. She had friends amongst the other servants. Marole who was the apprentice to the chief cook, who had skin the color of rubies and eyes of pure black. They played petanque together in the town and could beat any team save the adults. Averelle, whose mother had been a bandit once, and she met on market days and ate too many pastries together. When they were younger they would talk about boys in scornful imitation of the older girls, but now… now there was something _ different _ in the way they talked, in the way the boys seemed. 

There were the other young maids and lackeys, most of them friendly enough, and the ones who had not learned that Aere may have been a mere mortal, but that did not mean she feared a single one of them. 

Save Irina. She had fists of lead.

Nevertheless, it was Loki that came to her mind most, when laughing, when imagining, when bored, when lonely, when looking at the sky and wondering if he could see any of the stars that she could, as she did not understand how the Realms worked. When she asked any of the other servants none of them seemed to understand the question. The Realms were the Realms, that was all.

Loki would tell her, if he were there.

She wondered if any of those stars shone over Midgard.

When delegations from the other Realms came to offer their respects to the AllFather on the hundredth anniversary of his ascension to the throne Loki had stood with Thor at the side of their father’s throne and helped greet them. 

Elves both light and dark, dwarves as well, creatures from the farther stars, mortals, Vanir, fae, and darklings all approached in solemnity, bearing gifts and words of friendship. Through the long day and into the evening the line of dignitaries entered the throne room, walked the golden floor, and afterward joined the assembled populace who enjoyed the pleasures of the King’s mead hall.

Finally, very late, it seemed that the last group, Khrynniri from an ancient ocean planet, had been presented. Loki’s legs and feet ached, and apart from a brief snack when even their father had to take a break, he had not eaten all day and was ravenous. Thor slapped his shoulder, “I could eat an entire -”

At the far end of the hall the great doors, carved with protective runes, opened again. 

Another delegation.

Their herald struck his staff three times upon the ground. “Odin, King of Asgard, All-Father of the Aesir, Guardian of the Nine, Wanderer, One-eye, Raven Speaker. Farbauti, Queen of the Jotnar, Cruel Striker, Who Hunts With Fire, Widow of Laufey, sends greetings and envoys. May they approach?”

Odin stood quickly, his cloak thrown away, Gungnir in his hand. “You say Laufey’s widow? Since when has the Jotunn King died?”

The group of Frost Giants, dressed in their traditional garb, moved halfway through the hall and stopped. The herald, an elderly giant whose skin was more grey than blue, spoke again. “Our great king passed unto the ice this season past. He never fully recovered from the grievous wounds suffered in the war, though even weakened he was the mightiest amongst us. Our queen wishes to ensure the peace shall remain in place, now that our king has fallen. Her young are but babes in arms.”

The King turned to look at Frigga, and Loki, thrilled and nervous at the sight of the monstrous giants in the palace did not understand the look that passed between them. He did understand why Frigga placed a quelling hand on Thor’s shoulder to keep her oldest son from speaking.

With a nod, Odin motioned for the Jotunns to approach.

There were four in addition to the herald. Two were warriors, dressed in kilts, unarmed but Loki knew that the Jotunns could create weapons from the cold itself. 

The other two were clearly nobles, crowned with great, curved horns. The male was the tallest of their party and looked to be Odin’s age.

The woman was young, though not a girl. Unlike the males, she was not dressed in battle gear, though she carried herself with boldness. The long, black silk gown she wore was little more than a tabard held in place by an elaborate, golden belt. 

If you looked carefully you could see everything!

The sight of her made Loki’s hands grow damp. 

She was beautiful. Strange, and monstrous, but beautiful, with perfect, indigo skin that gleamed in the torchlight and wild, black hair that seemed to twist and tangle around her, moving on winds he could not feel. Her feet were bare, which he found upsetting, though not because it seemed disrespectful to his father but for a reason he could find no words for.

“We will speak in private. My Queen,” Odin said, “take our sons to feast with the rest of our guests. They will be host in my place.”

Loki found himself being steered away. At the door to the mead hall he turned.

The female was looking at him. Her eyes burned him like coals, first narrowing at the sight of him and then growing wide. Her lips, so blue as to be nearly black, spread in a wide smile, full of strange knowledge Loki found himself craving. 

For a moment their eyes met and she seemed to laugh, though she made no sound.

They did not join the feasting later, and when he and Thor both asked their father to tell them what had been discussed the AllFather waved them off. “When you are older, my sons. For now know that our peace with the Frost Giants holds, and that our people are safer than they have ever been.”

Thor grumbled that one day he would make certain that the Jotunns would never threaten anyone again. 

For years to come, on many nights Loki feel asleep picturing burning eyes and full lips.

Loki was furious.

As he grew older he was furious more and more often. Furious and frustrated and uncertain. The first two he made certain were known to all. The younger prince’s temper and the ways he expressed it was already legendary before all of the new furies and frustrations of the last years. His body these days was like a tangle of limbs with no center to regularly direct them. Hunger seemed to forever gnaw at his vitals and when he said he was starving his parent’s found it amusing and claimed it was but growth and soon would pass.

Every inch of his skin annoyed him. 

His hair was forever oily.

The very earth seemed to raise up and interfere with his suddenly very large feet, and nothing was safe from his fumbling hands that were as graceful as gauntlets.

All of this had been going on for some years, yet of late, the last few months, it had grown worse. 

Even his magic, his illusions, his doubles wavered and failed at the worst of times, as unreliable as his ability to sleep through the night without waking with his body seized by humiliating and sticky pleasure that he could not fathom.

He knew, for he had read in books and observed in others, that most males went through a period of unpleasant ungainliness at a certain age. Thor, for whom that period had ended shortly before Loki’s had begun, had been especially funny to watch as he flubbed and blundered his way through weapons practice, court, even meals. 

Even now his voice was still capable of sending Loki into a laughing fit that would end with him nearly ill and yet satisfied.

But for all of that and knowing that it was to be expected, the alterations to Loki seemed beyond any norms. At his worst Thor at least had not seemed to be boiling alive in his own skin most of the time. Then he would beg his mother tell him what was wrong with him, for he knew there was something abnormal.

Frigga would look to Odin, as if in question and a silent understanding that Loki could not understand would pass between them and she would take him to her workroom and give him a potion, telling him that there was nothing unusual, that all boys were different. 

The potion would cool his skin, yet his fury only grew worse as he knew they were keeping something from him. That he was ill, most likely, which was why he was thin and pale and not like his brother or father. 

Then it was that the rage and confusion of his state overwhelmed him and Loki found it necessary to do anything to dissipate some of that tension within. It was then that he would do what his father called meddling.

He meddled with the Einherjar uniforms by adding a certain potion to the laundry that caused the material to turn invisible after a certain amount of contact with skin. 

Loki did not see the fuss, their armour covered the more interesting parts of them.

He meddled with the ambassador from Nidavellir’s speech. 

Loki had assumed it was memorized and that it would only cause the man to stutter a bit, not that he would actually say those things aloud in court!

He meddled with the books in the dark room of the palace library.

Which was what had led to the punishment that kept him from Vanaheim that summer season.

Kept him from Aere, who was the only one in all of the Nine Realms who liked him best of all. 

After watching mother, Thor, and his friends disappear into the Bifrost, Loki’s frustration, already leaving him near to screaming, boiled over and rather than process in a princely fashion at his father’s side, back to the palace he ran. He ran with all of the speed in his rebellious legs, his feet pounding hard enough to hurt.

The Einherjar, even those used to his antics, were too surprised to halt him.

Asgardia was a blur of gold and color. He knew every street and so even his clumsy feet were able to carry him without thought to direct them. Now and then a voice called out, a vendor whose cart he bumped, someone who recognized him as one of the princes. He did not stop.

Finally, he reached the head of the great river Iving where it’s falls roared and the glorious dead of the Aesir were sent to Valhalla. Falling to his knees, his chest heaving, he screamed, though the sound of the endlessly falling water blocked all noise. 

As quickly as the rage had taken him, it was gone. Just like when the heat would suddenly leave his body, so his thoughts were calmer and he looked over his shoulder to where a rank of Einherjar were moving at quick time towards him. His punishment was no doubt about to go to from being confined to the palace grounds until the season ended to being confined to his rooms. 

Fine. He had plenty there to entertain himself with, and a few books from the dark room that had yet to be noticed as missing were amongst them. 

Loki stood and walked towards the soldiers. 

In one of those forgotten books was the key to his freedom. Thus far he’d had not good fortune in his search. With Thor gone he would have more time. 

It was almost a month before Thor was allowed to take Aere away from her duties so she could show him and the others the best fishing spots. Once or twice she had been sent to bring cool drinks or trays of delicacies to the prince and his companions. 

Thor complained of boredom, always grabbing the largest tankard of small beer.

Sif would roll her eyes and tell him that they could be practicing their spear combat, which they had all just grown tall enough to learn, waving Aere away neither taking anything nor looking directly at her.

Fandral would say that there was always entertainment to be found, if one looked closely enough, and then would take a bite of cake whilst staring into Aere’s eyes. She had seen such flirtation before. It looked ridiculous on a boy who could scarce grow chin whiskers yet, though he was older than she and so it was a thing to boast about to the other maids later.

Who said he did the same to all of them.

Volstagg would take the second biggest tankard and a block of cheese with a pleased sigh, nodding his thanks, and suggest they could go to town afterwards, which would elicit moans from even the patient Hogan. They had been to town over and over.

There was nothing more to do there.

Aere would curtsy, leaving the rest of the tray for them to pick on, rather wishing she could go to town. It had been ages.

On the day she was to take them to her fishing spot, the sky was still dark when she had finished putting on one of her oldest dresses, which was now rather short and a bit tight across the chest but could not be harmed by a fall in the river or the stink of fish when Diole came to her room with a large wicker backpack. 

“What is that?” Aere asked, tying her bootlace.

“Frying pan, grill, tinder, a pot. Salt and a few knives and skewers. Some bread and cheese, too, since they might not catch anything. Tea to make when you get there, and mugs of course. Small ale for later in the day. I was going to put in some fresh herbs, then I remembered they are from Asgard and wouldn’t know a proper meal from a poke in the eye, but I did add a cake. Just don’t burn anything and they’ll be happy.”

Aere looked at the pack, “But-” she started to object and then realized there was no point. Of course, she would be expected to see to the prince and his friends. “Fine,” she grumbled, grabbing a strap and almost pitching over since it didn’t budge an inch. 

Diole raised an eyebrow, “Do not go to the hall. Wait until Prince Thor comes seeking you. He’ll carry it to show off his new muscles, the ones not in his head,” the tiny elf said on her way from the room.

“But how did you-”

Dawn was just pinking the sky above the slowly moving river when Aere had finished unpacking the supplies, making the fire, and brewing the tea. Thor had, as predicted, carried the pack for her and then dropped it in a loud heap by the riverbank, eager to get his line in the water. 

Watching the prince’s party Aere could guess how the day would go. Thor would grow impatient quickly, especially if he were to not catch anything right away. Sif and Fandral would not be long behind him in wandering away to practice battle by hitting each other with sticks and throwing rocks. Hogun, the boy from Vanaheim, would set up his pole and then probably nap beside it, waking only if there was a tug on the line. Volstagg would alternate between dedication and distraction all day. 

Aere brought mugs to them and then pulled her net out, moving a bit downstream from the others so she could catch the fish they would no doubt miss.

“Wait! That is Loki’s!” Fandral said, walking over to see what she was doing and ignoring his own line entirely. Without asking the handsome boy took the end of the net from her hands before she could cast it into the water, examining the knots. “He used one to beat us in a fishing contest. Where did you get it?” He grinned at her, “Did you steal it from the little snake? That would be a good joke on him.”

Aere’s heart started to beat very fast and her lungs hurt. How dare he? 

Thor raised his head from where he was struggling with knotting a lure, “My mother’s servants do  _ not  _ steal!”

Aere waited. 

No one said anything else. 

So she shoved Fandral into the water. “And Loki is NOT a snake!”

Later that morning, Aere sat on the floor of Diole’s office, her knees bent and pressed to her mouth, sobbing herself sick whilst the way of the world for servants and masters was explained to her more clearly than ever in the past.

She did not see much outside of the kitchens or her room for the rest of the summer. 

On the last day of Queen Frigga and Prince Thor’s visit, Aere put on her black maid’s dress again, even though she had been relegated back to the scullery for her actions, and took her place to watch the procession of the Asgardians as they left again. 

This time she stood behind Diole again. Other than what was absolutely required she had not spoken to her since she had been punished. 

Once, when they had passed as Aere had gone to fetch something from the massive, steaming laundry building, Diole had said, “I am very old, and you are a child. What to you seems like an eternity is to me just a day. I miss your silly voice, but I can wait for you to forgive me. For you to grow up enough to know that I am right.”

Aere had just held the clean, fresh linens closer to her chest and walked on.

Now she noticed for the first time that she was now much taller than Diole, and that the old woman was stooped and had a slight hump to her back.

When the prince and his friends passed, Aere curtsied politely. 

Thor stopped, looking abashed, his eyes looking everywhere but at Aere. “Er…”

The Queen approached, “My son, I believe you have words for our dear Aere?”

He looked at his mother, his face hot and red, and then to Diole and Aere, “Thank you for defending my brother when I did not. It was poorly done of me.”

Now Aere blushed as well, “Probably.”

Diole lightly swatted her elbow.

“Um, I mean, thank you, Highness, for your apology. His Highness Loki has always been a friend to me.”

“You were a good friend to him, my dear, even if you may not have acted with the best decorum,” the Queen said.

“It was funny, though.” Aere was surprised to hear Sif say. She did not think that the warrior girl spoke to anyone but Thor and the three.

Now Thor smiled, a smile like sunshine and Aere understood for the first time why so many of the maids and hus-thralls practically sighed when the prince walked by. “Indeed, good Sif! Loki will be most sorry to have not seen it himself! Worry not, I will make certain he knows how well you defended his honor,” he added to Aere.

“It will just make him angry,” Volstagg muttered. “Everything makes him angry lately.”

  
  


  
  



	4. Death Walks Faster Than the Wind and Never Returns What He Has Taken.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Aere both experience rites of passage

After his being left behind as punishment for his misbehavior had led Loki to yet further and more and more elaborate misbehavior it seemed as if he would spend most of those particular years that were most difficult for growing males in perpetual trouble. Yet then, with a suddenness that would have made no sense with a boy less clever and convoluted than he, nearly all manner of mischief stopped, his behavior became both respectful and subdued, and his contrition seemed sincere.

Loki had made a point of being exceptionally well behaved for several weeks at the end of that summer. Indeed, for it was for even nigh on a month, so when at last his mother and brother returned from her near to yearly visit to Vanaheim they found a much-changed young prince waiting at Odin’s right hand. 

Certainly from that point onwards Odin, and then Frigga, could rarely find evidence that Loki was anything other than an exemplary child and an excellent prince - diligent in his studies, be they of magic, politics, or warfare, as well as polite, and thoughtful. Indeed, so well behaved was Loki that it suddenly cast into glaring light the oft times less than exemplary actions of their firstborn son.

Actions about which their father had always been indulgent, which in turn had made Thor feel not merely that he could do no wrong, but that he could hardly ever be wrong at all. 

Though over these same acts their mother was oft-times disappointed in him, which pierced Thor through the heart with guilt. Though it rarely changed how he behaved, save to seek out his brother’s aid in keeping his bad behavior covert.

Without his soul seemed eased though it remained troubled, yet the war that seemed to be raging within his body had slowed and then ceased, leaving him with the gift for seeming cool and composed no matter what raged within him.

Additional to the change in behavior of the formerly recalcitrant prince, over the next few years, it became not uncommon, though certainly never boring, to see Jotnar in the court of the AllFather on their Queen’s business. 

On some few occasions over those years, the Jotunn woman who had come as part of the first envoy would come with them, though as time passed Loki realized she was barely out of her girlhood herself. Looking into the black books of the great library, he found several on the Frost Giants and learned that their females matured physically much more quickly than the males for reasons to do with procreating.

He then carefully, and more than once, read about their procreative acts, for the more one knew about an enemy the better.

When next she came it was again with the much older Jotunn, Lord Norfi, who was now the first-ever Jotunn ambassador to the court of Asgard. 

“Her name is Nótt,” Thor had discovered. 

The princes and their companions, Sif, Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogan, were playing  _ hnútukast  _ in the forest beyond the capitol. When they had played as merest children they had used bones from the kitchens, it was a sign of their nearing adulthood that each of them had a bone that had come from a creature they had hunted each themselves. 

Thor, as befitted the crown prince and the strongest of all, had the femur of a bilgesnipe.

Loki, as befitted the cleverest, had the forearm bones of a Mare, captured from one of his own night terrors.

Sif, being fiercest, had scapula of a snow wolf.

Volstagg, who was the most dedicated hunter, had the rib of a great elk.

Hogun, the most patient hunter, had the jaw of a mountain goat.

Fandral, the swiftest, had the sternum of a giant rhea.

No matter what animal they came from, each hurt when you were struck on the top of the head with it, though admittedly the edge of Sif’s weapon was especially painful. 

It was Loki’s favorite war game, as for all of the extreme strength, speed, fierceness, dedication, and patience of each of the others, he was second to each and thus able to use speed against Thor, patience against Sif, cleverness against Fandral, and so on, allowing him to count coup on his companions at will. 

They were stopped, the heat of the day having tired out even the indefatigable Thor, and were passing stone bottles of mead and dark ale. “Nótt?” Volstagg asked. “Is that her given name or her patronymic?”

Thor shrugged, “I heard the old Jotunn call her thus. She is the niece of the dead king.”

_ Nótt _ , Loki thought, picturing her, all but naked as she had last appeared before the Odin’s throne, dressed in a warrior’s kilt, boots, and vambraces, her breasts bare but for a silver pectoral hung with chains that covered her only when she stood still. 

As ever, she seemed to know he was looking at her. That he could  _ not  _ not look at her, though he might try. Again she smiled at him, looking at him from the side of her gaze, though she seemed to still be attending to his father’s words. Yet this time the smile was different. Not so superior. Rather it was surprised as if she saw something different now when she looked at him.

_ Nótt.  _ The name rang through him like the sound of ice cracking against the shores of a great ocean, echoing against his ribs, his skull, his loins. 

“Brother? Brother!” As if from far away Thor was calling him, “Enough gathering of wool, prepare to defend yourself, it shall be Sif, Hogan, and I, against you and the others, and this time you shall not win.”

Loki smiled like the viper that seemed to infect his blood whenever Nótt entered his thoughts. Tonight she would be at the mead hall and see his new glory. Today he could not lose.

And so he did not. Thor, normally not one for losing with grace, rubbed his sore head and laughed as if even he could see the truth, that from this day forward all would change for Loki and therefore the day was his.

That night, for the first time, all of the Frost Giants were invited to join the rest of the court of the AllFather in his mead hall. Although not quite so great an honor as sitting with them at the feast, it was still of great symbolic importance as it was sharing meat and drink and therefore being given full guestright by the royal family, especially as this hall was held in honor of the younger prince.

Loki dressed with specific care that night. He had visited the finest tailor in the capitol, realized that nothing carried there was what he wanted. All of the items were meant for bulky men, with arms and neck’s thick as those of bears, thighs like oak trees, men unlike himself.

That day Loki gathered materials - butter-soft leathers and suedes, silks from the mulberry groves of Vanaheim, a bar of pure gold, another of steel, and thread spun from the sinews of a behemoth. It took him a satisfactorily short period of time to have created a suit of it, one cut to show his leanness rather than hide it, and the length of his leg rather than its bulk, also contrasting the new width of his shoulders to the svelteness of his hips.

He looked at himself in the mirror, at the way his hair brushed his shoulders now that he was old enough to grow it to show his status as a warrior of Asgard, and the precision of his face. 

For the first time, it occurred to him that, different though he might be from Thor’s golden perfection, he too, was handsome. 

He knew that from the new look in Nott’s eye. 

The mead hall of the AllFather was both a room - the oldest in the palace, it having been part of the original stronghold of the Aesir in the earliest days, a longhall with fire pits in the middle and a pitched roof, it was the wooden heart of the fortress - and an event that happened at times throughout the year, where the king shared his largess of food and drink, and gave out golden arm-rings and titles to the warriors who had pleased him.

Loki accepted many goblets of spiced honey wine and back slaps at having been awarded his first of both, showing he was now official of age. The ring formed at his own request as a serpent with emerald eyes devouring his own tail felt odd yet right as it gently squeezed his upper arm, its magic making it fit. 

“Sly of Battle!” Thor said, raising a cup to his brother, “An excellent title! The first of many no doubt, little brother!”

“You will need someone Sly of Battle, my friend,” Fandral said to Thor, “if you are not going to get us all killed like you nearly did on Nemador.”

“The battle of Nemador was magnificent!”

“So is life, Highness, so is life.”

Loki drank to that as well. He did not especially care for the swordsman, but that did not make him wrong. Life was magnificent, at least tonight.

The rest of their cadre, along with those other guests who stood nearby all raised their cups as well. Across the hall, Loki met Frigga’s eye and she smiled at him with great joy, also saluting him. As he turned back to offer a toast to the Einherjar who had been honored along with him that night he saw Brini, his mother’s chief lady, approaching the queen with a look of seriousness on her face.

“Pardon,” he offered to the others, “I must see to the queen,” he raised his cup again and then turned to see what was the matter when he found himself facing Nótt.

Though a giantess she was only the smallest amount taller than Loki, aided by both his long legs and the extra height he had added to the boots he had crafted himself that day. She wore Asgardian dress to honor her host. The demure dress did not suit her barbaric dimensions and the glorious size of her … various features.

Up close she was even more than he had thought. Not more beautiful. Simply more. More present, more powerful. Indeed he could feel the seidr dancing about her as did the musky perfume of her skin that left him more light-headed than the mead could.

Again she smiled at him, no longer as a woman smiled at a boy, but as she might smile at a man. Loki had been smiled at by enough maidens of the court to know the difference.

“Highness,” she said, offering a small nod of deference. “May a visitor to the greatness of your father’s court offer her congratulations to you?”

Loki smiled back, his eyes locking onto the flame of hers, having some instinctive understanding of how to play this game. “I would be honored.”

She took a half a step back, so they might see each other more fully. The pressing, hot crowd seemed to move away from her instinctively, few of them being aware of the push of her seidr affecting them. “How is it done amongst …  _ your _ kind?”

“You drink to me. Raise a cup, or goblet and offer me good wishes or praise, and then drink,” he motioned for a server, seeing she had no wine.

Before the thrall could make her way through the mass of thirsty bodies, Nótt reached out and wrapped her fingers around Loki’s hand where it held his own cup, lifting it so only her eyes could be seen above the rim, “To your ever-growing glory, my prince,” she whispered, and then drank, her lower lip snagging slightly on his finger as she did.

Loki jerked his hand away. Mead should have sloshed down her front though it did not. Her touch was cold, and he knew the flesh of the Jotnar burned the skin of the unwary with ice as fierce as any fire. Yet his hand was unharmed.

Though within the cup the wine was frozen solid.

Shock and lust warred through his veins. 

“What-”

“Prince Loki! Your Highness!” Brini was approaching him through the crowd, her hand waving, “Highness, the queen has need of you!”

Loki turned, snake quick. Where Frigga had standing she was now seated, with the king crouched at her side holding her hand. Thor was already making his way towards them, a grim look on his face.

Nótt forgotten, he joined his family, certain something terrible was afoot.

When Diole died Aere was with her, singing a song from Alfheim about the ancient days when the Realms each stood alone.

The  _ hjertet af jern _ , a disease that affected only elves and even amongst them only the oldest had come upon her fast and hard after her last visit to her homeworld. She had taken Aere with her, and though the trip was short it had been long enough for her to see that the elves were a dying people, and not merely because of their sicknesses. 

Their world was faded, the remnants of its splendor - cities made of spires of ivory, crystal, and silver that could have once housed thousands, so far did they reach the skies, now crumbled like old cake, their forests shrunk to a few groves, and no children anywhere, told of a civilization falling away from time and life.

“We were once everywhere, girl. Elves traveled forgotten roads between the Realms before those Aesir warmongers even dreamt something like their Bifrost was possible. We had brothers and sisters amongst the Vanir, amongst the Dwarves, even amongst your mortal kin, though we hid from them most of the time.

“They tended to worship or destroy anything they did not know the smell of, and we were few enough even in those far ago days.”

Then she had coughed, and Aere had seen that the iron had spread to Diole’s lungs even more quickly than the healer from the village had thought. “Let me send word to the queen. She will surely have you brought to Asgard. Their healers are far more gifted than-”

Diole patted her hand, “No, sweet girl. I am too far gone. I knew that before we left Alfheim. But that is no longer my home. I wanted to die here, where I served my beloved, my Frigga, and I raised you, my little Aere. Maybe not well, or always as kindly as I might have. My heart is not tender, though I have tried to protect you when I could. I refuse to die amongst those war-loving bastards on Asgard.”

After that, when Aere left for a moment to fetch more opium tea to ease her pain, the old elf fell into a raving sort of sleep as the iron crept towards her brain.

Near dawn, as death gently opened the window to enter her rooms, Diole woke a bit and squeezed Aere’s arm, “I should have told you.”

Aere refused to cry, knowing Diole hated tears. Earlier she had shooed the other servants from the room, so the weeping would not annoy her in her last moment. Rather she kissed the paper skin on the back of her clutching fingers, “You told me so much. Taught me so much.”

Diole shook her head, “There is more. I should have mailed your letters, but I did not want your heart broken. There are too many lies for either of you to be able to give your hearts the way hearts should be given. I never wanted your heart broken. It’s a good heart. I love you, changeling child. If I had been one of the Midgardian fae I think I would have stolen you anyway.”

And then she fell to raving again, strange, horrible things that made no sense, frightening things that had to be iron nightmares, and when it was almost unbearable, death had mercy on both Diole and Aere and took her away.

Diole’s body was entirely riddled with iron and so could not be returned to Alfheim where it would poison the soil, nor burned as it should be if it could not rest in the forest of her ancestors, so the AllFather called upon Heimdal to send the Bifrost from Asgard to Vanaheim and then into the fading sun that rode through the sky above her homeworld. 

After the simple ceremony that accompanied her journey, for elves did not celebrate death, Frigga had brought servants from the palace to create a feast for the servants on her estate and to run things for a few days. 

To honor Diole’s passing she gave all of them leave to visit their families for a few days, including any money they might need for such travel, and gifts to bring home.

Loki found Aere at their tree.

She had no family to go to. Or any other home.

When they had first arrived he had not seen her, as she was with Frigga, preparing Diole’s iron riddled body for its last journey, and then had gone to her room and not come out until the funeral. He knew that he should seek her out, that it would be appropriate to offer her condolences on the death of her adopted mother, but he feared that they would no longer be friends.

He feared that he might blurt out a truth she did not know and before the funeral was not the time.

Though at the funeral, she processed to the site where Diole would be gathered up by the Bifrost with the servants, afterward Aere stood beside the queen near the bier. Her hands fidgeted as she seemed to want to reach out and touch the dead woman. 

Her eyes were hollow, but dry, and she wore her black maid’s dress and heavy shoes. Rather than twin plaits, one long, thick braid, pulled so tight that it looked positively painful, ran down her back, the end of its brushing the tops of her legs.

Her long legs.

Loki gulped. 

He had somehow forgotten that Aere would have grown as well. He had tried not to think about her very much over the years, as she had stopped writing him after last they had been together and Loki considered she must have forgotten him.

When she looked at him, her face was that of someone nearly complete. Her eyes narrowed at the look he gave her, and her chin, a stubborn knob, raised and she looked away. There was a hurt in her, Loki could feel it. He could see it. He knew it. 

When he found her she was high in the tree, far higher than either of them had ever climbed when they had spent those summers together. Then again, the tree had grown as well. Her clunky, ugly shoes were resting neatly on one of the roots, as was the cloak she had worn out of the hall when he had first tried to follow her.

Autumn was just coming, and he could see the crow black of her dress amongst the red, gold, and green leaves.

The whole walk there he had tried to think of what to say to her. To comfort his oldest friend, even though it was a question if they were friends any longer, so many years had it been. They were both practically adults, raised so far apart and for such different purposes. What could be between them any longer?

For a moment he thought of turning away. She probably wanted to be alone.

Then he heard a strange sound.

A long, musical sound soughing through the branches.

“Aloooooo….”

Aere was howling, howling like a hound.

Startled, a laugh barked out of Loki, which he reasoned was appropriate. 

“Well, are you coming up here or not, or must your servant come down, Highness?” Her words were as tart as Diole’s, though her voice was husky and rich.

Loki grasped the wide trunk of the tree, dug in with his fingers and booted toes and climbed. And climbed. And climbed.

Aere was sitting on a wide, high branch, her long legs dangling, her bare feet flexing and red with cold. 

“Apologies, I still have yet to master that flying cantrip,” Loki said, easily walking out onto the branch, offering her a courtly bow, hand to his heart.

“You really are a prince now,” she said. “I wrote you. Diole threw the letters away. Did you write me? Did she throw those away, too?”

“I did not write you. I thought you -...” he stopped himself and sat beside her, “I should have written you.” He had never written her, he now realised, not for fear of her rejection that he knew would not come, but rather for dread of being the one to tell her the truth about her home Realm. A truth no one else would tell her and that as her friend he owed her. 

“There is something I should have told you. Something that you do not know-”

“Yes. You should have.” Aere did not look at him and seemed to not hear what he had just said. Then with no other word, she burst into tears, nearly falling from the branch.

Loki’s heart leapt so hard it bruised itself against his breastbone as he clutched her, pulling her against his chest as he anchored them against the trunk of the tree, letting her sob her heart out against the thudding of his own.

When she started to quiet, he whispered against her ruthlessly pulled hair, “Mother wishes to stay until the Midwinter, and father will allow it. Would you…” he tried not to gulp like a child and failed, “would you like me to stay as well?”

He felt her rub her nose on his tunic, “It’s too late to go fishing this year.”

And just like that, he knew that between them it would be as if they were never apart. And he knew that there would be a right time to tell her that Midgard was no more.

Later, he knew he was wrong about both things.

“We’ll have to think of something else to do.”

The months passed as quickly as leaves of parchment in fire, and soon their time together was nearly over. 

So it was with but three days to Midwinter, on the night when bonfires were all lit along the River Vagelmir, that Loki kissed Aere for the first time. 

  
  
  



	5. Flowers Bloom Then Cease to Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aere grieves and learns something about her fate.

The morning after Diole was sent into the star Aere rose before dawn, put on the best of her black dresses, the cleanest of her long aprons that was held in place by copper brooches she had bought for herself with some of the first pay she had been given on coming of age, and her heavy shoes and went to the kitchen to supervise the morning meal for the royal family.

Her friend Marole was in charge of the baking for the day and was already putting loaves into the great, wood-burning ovens, whilst watching over sweet cakes that were in the magnificent, gleaming silver cookstove that had been sent from Asgard years before. Even her heavily muscled arms strained at the weight of the dough, as they already knew that for Loki and the King they would need two loaves each per meal, and twice that for Prince Thor.

“You shouldn’t be here this morning. No one expects you to work today. Of course, no one expected you to work yesterday or the day before when she passed, but you did it anyway,” Marole said as she carefully slid each pan along the stone bottom of the oven, each making a pleasing scraping noise as the fire hissed a bit.

Aere shrugged, “What was I to do instead? Lay in bed, awake because I am always awake at this time and try not to think about her?”

Marole shrugged back. “You could do whatever you want.”

She could not answer that, since she had no idea what that was. It had been a long time since she’d had the time to want anything. Neither of them spoke for a while, and the silence became awkward.

“I know this object,” Marole, pointing at the stove, “is supposed to be the top shit from the Realm Eternal, yet somehow it always burns the frosting. Always.” Her black eyes glared at the machine as if the problems between them were personal.

“Diole always said that the Asgardians cared more about appearances than taste,” Aere answered, heading to the stillroom for lavender and moly to mull the morning ale with.

“His Majesty and the Crown Prince perhaps, he certainly seems all muscle and no taste buds,” Marole bent over to look in at the loaves, the firelight giving her crimson skin a burnished glow. “The Queen and Prince Loki, however, are made of finer stuff.” Then she bent back to her work, making more elaborate pastries that would be eaten later in the day.

It was to the good that Aere was able to prepare the morning ale, write out a menu, go to the garden to oversee the bringing in of the flowers to decorate the rooms that the Queen’s family would be using, and visit the laundry, all without having to think, for her mind not on her work. 

Every thought she had was of Diole, of how she would never again correct the amount of spices she added to a dish, or tell her the history of a flower, or a word that the All-Speech could not translate. Her face had been agelessly beautiful, the dove gray oval of it unwrinkled, though her hands were thin-skinned and had shaken a bit those last years, yet you could feel the weight of the millennia when near her. You could feel every year she carried in her blood and bones in your own if she was displeased with you.

Diole was often displeased. With the ways the Realms were governed. With the foolishness of most creatures who could not be kind to themselves, let alone to others, and few of whom could bend their backs to a full day of work. But when she was happy…

When she told those stories, of the flowers, or of the words, or of the worlds, smiling without knowing she did it, absently stroking Aere’s hair, the peace of it flowed out from her and it seemed even the birds sang sweeter.

Not that it lasted long.

Aere snorted. 

Her lungs ached. “ _ Maybe I’m coming down with ague, I’ll have to ask Diole to make me a  _ -”

She had forgotten that quickly. How long does it take to remember that a person is gone, she wondered. A person that you cannot ever remember not knowing.

Shaking her head, she carried an armload of flowers - late blooms of asters and pink lilies, with sprays of bittersweet - into the informal dining chamber where the family would be breakfasting.

The food was nearly all laid out and she had just finished filling the carved wood pots with flowers when the queen entered on the king’s arm.

Aere had never seen the AllFather himself before the funeral the day before. She had in her mind pictured Thor, only larger and… more so. 

Rather than a great golden idol, the king resembled nothing so much as a scholar despite his great size. Though she had never been to school herself, Aere had often seen students from the university in the capital city of Vanaheim arguing with their instructors in the town square or one of the taverns that circled it, and his look would have fit in well she thought, until she saw felt the implacable weight of his gaze. 

She shuddered. Njord save her, she was certain that if he’d possessed both eyes she would have been crushed beneath that glance he gave her as she bowed. “Your pardon, Majesties. Theyr will be attending this morning, should there be anything we have forgotten that you desire.”

The queen reached down, taking her elbow, “Please, Aere, you should not be working this day.” Then she laughed to herself, sadly, “Normally I would have instructed Diole to tell you that you must take time for yourself, a few days at the very least. Now I suppose I must tell you to tell yourself, since I can think of no one else who might come close to taking her place.”

Aere’s lungs burned and her body prickled with heat, her skin suddenly as ill-fitting as another woman’s dress, “Majesty, I am not-”

The queen spoke on, “Husband, this is Aere of Midgard, who was Diole’s much-beloved child, and is very dear to both myself and Loki, since they were little more than babes together.”

The king nodded, his face solemn, “I grieve for your loss, and I know you shall do Diole’s memory great credit as you take her place here, though you be little more than a babe even now.”

Though she could not remember it, Aere knew later she must have responded in the expected way, agreed to not work for the next several days, and then left them to their repast.

Not knowing what else to do, she returned to her room and lay down. The strangeness of Diole not being there to talk to, to instruct her, or to tell her to figure things out for herself was a weight. The greater strangeness of her not being _ anywhere _ , of her not existing and how hard that was to understand was still more weight.

The idea of her having to somehow  _ be  _ Diole was actually crushing her to the ground.

It had always been in her mind, in a quiet place that she did not visit often, that a day would come when she would go. That a door would open in her life and she would step through it, waving her goodbyes and promising to come back and visit. Now it seemed that not only was that door locked, but it would also be bricked over as well.

Her chest started to heave, as if the weight upon her was actual and not merely in her head. A sob of air escaped her and she sat up, rubbing the heel of her hand on her sternum, trying to breathe. “No,” she said, trying the word to see how it felt. “No.”

There was a hard, firm knock on her door before she could decide. “Aere? May I enter?”

It was Loki.

When she had seen him at the funeral for the first time since Diole passed she had a thought that was not about loss or loneliness. Actually, it had not so much been a thought as stunned noise in her head.

Her childhood friend, mischief incarnate, trouble personified, was now an adult by the standards of his people, complete with the armring of a full warrior of Asgard as well as a prince. It made her realize that she was grown as well. Diole’s death had not done that. Time had and now she must face that truth.

Yet even more stunning was… how stunning he was. Loki had been an adorable little boy, with his round face and bright green eyes with black hair always in it, even older he had been prettier than any girl she knew, or so she had been told by the other girls and boys on the estate and in the town. She had never noticed.

Now she noticed.

She was stunned.

The way his body had grown tall and graceful, yet strong. At one point he had dipped downwards to pick up something that his mother had dropped - a flower, a glove - and the sight of his long thigh flexing and tensing under the leather of his trews had left her dry-mouthed. When he took her hand it disappeared in his own. 

A warrior.

A prince. But really a prince now, not just in name.

The voice that called her was deep, rich like she might imagine being rubbed over by velvet or fur might feel. The sound of it even now made her body alert and wary. As if he were a danger that should be run from. That he might do something to her. Something that there could be no surviving.

She liked it. She loved it.

Then there was his face… oh, his face had distracted her so much it was embarrassing, and Aere rather wished she had done more with the boys she’d courted and sparked with, thinking that she might have been less taken and distracted if she had. Though she was pretty certain it would have only made things worse.

Now he was at her door.

And she already couldn’t breathe.

She pulled open her door, and he had to catch himself on the frame to keep from falling into her. 

Aere hated herself for wishing that he hadn’t. That his heavy body had taken her to the floor. 

“Are we still friends?” she asked, standing under him, under his poison green gaze. “Even though you are,” she stepped back and gestured to him, “all of this now. And I just this,” she added, gesturing to herself as well.

He cocked his head, frowning, staying so close, “You know we are. Though I do not like that way of putting it. Why would we not be.”

“Because…. Because you have seen war and life and worlds I cannot imagine and I have seen the house and the garden and the town. Because if things are as they are meant to be you will see so much more and I will see nothing.”

Loki leaned on against the frame of the door, an eyebrow raised, “Do you remember when we were but this big,” he held his hand flat towards the ground, “and you persuaded me to take the Ley Line train to the capitol so we could get custard tarts, though we were not supposed to go past the sight of the house.”

“You made duplicates of us playing quoits. They were so good they even had a fight over the score and cried like spoiled babies.”

He nodded, a lazy grin on his lips, “That girl would never be trapped by a house and a garden and a town. That girl is my de… my closest friend, letters or no.”

“Good,” she leaned back into her room, taking her grey cloak from its hook, “then distract me, Your Highness.” She started to put it on, when Loki took it from her hands and with a flourish had it about her shoulders, pinning it closed under her chin that he lifted so he could look into her face, smiling at her, his eyes strangely black.

“You trust me, to pick what we do then?”

She nodded, “Of course.”

He took her hand and they were off.

And a month passed.

As the last of the bonfires on the ridge over the great river lit, Aere threw her hands into the air, joining the cheering of the rest of the crowd from the town and the estate, with a kind of triumph that seemed almost personal and that he could not understand. 

She spun on her booted heel towards him. “Yes!” she shouted. The snow that had finally started, an hour before, coming late into what had been an unnaturally warm and long autumn salting her hair and catching on the badly knit scarf of green and black that she had made for herself.

When the hot cider cart came towards them she darted towards it, “I’ll buy!”

Her boots, which were rather old, slid in the slush. 

He looked at the end of the scarf she had made him, just like hers but with far neater stitches, shot through here and there with gold thread. Still not good enough for a prince, yet finer than hers. 

A sweetheart’s Midwinter gift. He had almost not worn it today, as it was not of the quality that he was used to. Suddenly it felt too warm. He felt too warm everywhere as he watched Aere make her way with authority through the crowd to get their drinks and return with them.

Loki knew at that moment what he was going to do. 

No. He knew what he  _ had _ to do. It was not a choice on his part, for in as much as he hated to commit any act that was not his own idea he could see that in this case, his force of will was not only useless, he did not wish it to win.

Though he still hadn’t told her the truth about her world, a secret that was not really his to keep and that plagued him, Loki knew he could not wait or he would quite probably die. 

Fine. 

At least he could choose where.

Reaching out, he snagged Aere’s fingers in his, where he could feel her heat through the thin, finely knit wool. Without a word, he turned, “Come with me.” 

“The drinks!” he heard her cry, along with the cups splashing to the icy ground.

Aere had no idea what had happened in that moment to Loki. One second they had been laughing. Laughing like she had not laughed since they were little together, laughing in a way she had forgotten, and the next minute he looked almost angry and had grabbed her hand and was now all but pulling her behind him, away from the lights of the bonfires, and the music, and the dancing upon the ice, and the smell of hot cider and smoke. 

Pulling her into the trees and the darkness.

He, of course, moved gracefully despite the snow hiding every root or rock, as if he were almost skimming the top of the drifts, whilst she managed to keep her feet only through good fortune and the fact that he was pulling her so quickly she didn’t actually have time to fall.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Not stopping or turning, he answered, “I do not know,” through what seemed like gritted teeth.

They moved farther and farther from the river and all she could think was that if they somehow were separated,  _ she _ could not see in the dark and would undoubtedly be lost forever in this ridiculous forest.

Just as she was about to yell, either at him or just incoherently since her feet were freezing now, he stopped before a great blue ash. It had not finished shedding its leaves before this snow and so its limbs were bowed to the earth, encircling the trunk. Before she could question him, Loki ducked under the tree, again pulling her along, so now she was covered in snow.

Irritated and out of humor with him, Aere jerked her hand free and started brushing snow away from her hair, her shoulders, her arms, shivering as what felt like an entire drift made its way under her collar and down her back, which snapped her temper. She was just about to give him the rough side of her tongue, when she looked about.

Within, the faint light of the full moon shown here and there between the branches, and they were in a silent, white bower, its delicately arched ‘roof’ as high as a temple. “How did you know this was here?” she asked, carefully walking about the massive trunk, still staring upwards at the filigree of leaves and ice.

Loki just shook his head. 

“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, still angry with him but well on the way to forgiveness.

“Not as beautiful as you,” he said, behind her.

Aere snorted at him, “Oh, of course not.”

The snow that had crunched under her steps was silent under his, so she was unprepared when his arms snaked about her, and she could feel him pressing his face against the top of her head. 

Pressing his lips there.

“I was not teasing.”

She gulped, a lump of pain and wanting in her throat, “You have to be. You are always joking. Always tricking-”

Loki stepped around her, his height blocking the moon, the filigree of the leaves, her breath. “I am going to kiss you, Aere.” His voice was commanding, and then turned plaintive, “May I kiss you, Aere?”

Aere had kissed before. Stolen kisses on the Equinox when the Festival of the Spring moon made everyone free. More personal kisses, with the three boys she had courted with, though they had all been rather less than she hoped and seemed rather more to them than to her. 

Kissing Loki would be different.

Kissing Loki would be certain. 

Kissing Loki would change her forever.

She knew that she would ache for him until she died if she kissed him.

“Yes. Please,” she added, the servant in her still alive, though she sensed that kissing Loki would kill that part of her forever and she was not sure what would be left afterward.

She expected him to laugh. Rather his eyes were more serious, his face softer. He touched her cheek, his fingers sliding over her hair, still ruthlessly pulled into its braid. “I am going to undo that plait and spread your hair over the snow,” he whispered as he bent close enough that his breath brushed her lips, making them part as she wanted to swallow his words.

At first, his lips were nearly as soft as his breath, barely touching her. They were open, when she leaned in the inner part of their lips met, sensitive and delicate. A shudder moved from her into him, and then he lifted her as if she were no more than a paper doll, and her back was against the tree, and he bent over her with the same grace as those branches and then they truly kissed.

His tongue gently, then lushly, licked into her mouth, waking her, startling her, and she did as he did. Finding a part of him in her body, then her in his, was like being drunk. She had to clutch his hair, his hair that she  _ loved _ and had wanted to touch every day they had been together, to keep from flying away. His hands were spread wide on her shoulder, on her hip, and he rocked against her, making the ache that was over her skin every time they were together turn to actual pain.

Only touching him more could save her from that agony, Aere was sure.

Not letting their mouths part for a moment, even if now and then it was as if they would separate, so only their lips touched, she desperately dug under the layers of his wool and leather and silk. He laughed against her, and reached to pull his tunic loose so she could touch his waist, his ribs, the fine muscles beneath.

Aere gasped and almost pulled away in shock. Who felt like that? 

Loki did not let her surprise come between them. He yanked her away from the tree so now it was only his arms that pressed her, whilst she explored as far as she could in his embrace.

Njord! Her dearest friend really was a god and she was kissing him like a farmhand at a fair!

She didn’t stop. “Don’t stop,” she murmured, feeling drugged.

“I’m not,” he answered, his voice even huskier than normal. The sound made her go soft, made the pain in her flesh work downwards, inwards.

“It was to make sure you didn’t,” she told him. 

Loki jerked back himself now, a stunned look in his eyes, and now he laughed hard and harder, pulling Aere against him as he rocked her back and forth.

“Liar,” she said with her own laugh, “you just did.” 

He swooped down again, his mouth open and demanding, taking her breath, her thoughts, and her ability to stand, and he did not stop. 

  
  
  



	6. Life is Like a Beautiful Melody, Only the Lyrics Are Messed Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One truth is told.

After he kissed Aere for the first time Loki lay awake in his bed, his body thrumming with need, smiling, and considering. There were three days from the Night of Bonfires until Midwinter Day, and then Loki would have to return to Asgard with the Queen. 

Three days. 

How many times could they kiss in three days? How much of each other could they touch? Would they touch? What secrets would they tell each other?

He thought of the secret about Midgard that he knew, and then he thought about how for the first time since Diole had died Aere had spent a full day happy, even before they kissed. He could not tell her yet. When he was back in Asgard he would go to the forbidden shelves of the library and find out all he could of the fate of her home Realm. Then, when he returned, he would tell her how.

Then he thought, how soon could he return?

Loki’s brain was never still. Even now part of his thoughts were working out the argument he would have with his mother over what could be construed as taking advantage of a servant. Another was listing all of the objections his father would have to such a misalliance, of which there would be many, all severe. Still another was creating a useful list of retorts and insults for the inevitable teasing that would come from Thor and the others. He knew that Fandral would be particularly caustic. 

He cared not.

For the first time since he had been a small boy, Loki did not care for his parent's approbation, his brother’s admiration, or the respect of others. With that peace, he fell asleep.

Aere heard Loki’s voice, raised and strident, rather how she would imagine he sounded in battle, coming from the Queen’s tiring room. 

Like any good servant, she found an excuse to work just outside of the door and listen in. Who knew that the top of the doorway had not been dusted in so long? She thought to herself. It was shameful, really.

Her Majesty’s voice had a strained patience, “I am not accusing you of abusing your position, my son, at least not consciously. Yet it is not always possible for those who serve us, to be honest in their own feelings for fear of losing favor and position.”

Loki’s snort was loud, “Does Aere strike you as especially meek? Or for that matter weak, mother? Would she…  _ interest _ me in the slightest should either be true? One time she knocked me off of a horse we were riding on when I would not show her how to handle the reins, and then taught herself after the beast ran away with her.”

“Was that the horse you stole from my brother’s stabl-. Never mind, that is not to the point. You are no longer children.”

“That is most certainly true…” There was a tone to his voice that made Aere shiver and made his mother groan in annoyance.

“Loki...” the queen sounded concerned now, and Aere could hear the heavy swishing drape of Frigga’s velvet morning gown sweeping the marble floor as she paced. 

That gown was terrible to clean and now the hem would be dusty.

“Loki, what can come of it? I would not be so concerned if I did not know that  _ both  _ of your hearts are involved. I saw it so long ago, the way it would be with the two of you. I should have stopped it then, I know that Diole worked to do so, but I could not bear to take any love out of your life. And now-”

“And now you will because she is a servant and as you said we are no longer child-”

“No, rather because _ you _ are a prince and you have obligations beyond your own desires, young though you may be.” Now the queen’s voice rose as well.

“I hear father there, mother. How strange his words sound in your sweet tones.” Loki’s voice was ironic, “Very well, I will tell you what I would tell him. Prince of Asgard, of  _ anywhere, _ or no, I do what I want.”

Aere finished cleaning the lintel and turned to walk away. 

“Aere, come in please,” the queen called out.

Straightening her skirt, Aere entered, bowing politely which made Loki scowl, which made her want to laugh in a giddy way even though she was aware of the seriousness of the moment. Just being near him made her feel more alive, more aware, more awake.

Frigga crossed to her, taking her hands, “I am not angry with you, my dear girl, nor Loki either, truly. I am simply concerned -”

Taking her fate into her hands, Aere bobbled again, “Your pardon, ma’am, I know your concerns. I have them too. Loki does as well, though he would be too stubborn to admit it.” That made him scowl harder and she looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “But it cannot be helped.”

She thought she should say more. That she did not expect Loki to be with her forever, that she knew the distance between them was too great, that a day sooner than later she would have to bow to his spouse. The words would not come. 

When the day came that Loki married some noble of another Realm, or a great warrior, she would not be there to bow. 

For now all that mattered was that everything between them could not be helped. Nor stopped. Nor would Aere try. Loki was hers, perhaps not forever, though that thought made her hurt, but for now. She would keep him, as he said himself be he a prince or no.

Loki stood beside her, taking her hand.

Frigga’s beautiful face was stern, but her ancient eyes were understanding, “Then may the Gods of the Gods help you, my darlings, for I fear that no one else shall.”

For the three days that remained to them, Loki refused to be parted from Aere save by sleep and absolute necessity. He would follow her to the kitchens and use seidr to make the knives chopping carrots move with speed and surety, the fires cook faster, the spoons move more easily as they stirred. Marole was annoyed and scornful, saying that food made with magic always tasted off.

Kiska, in charge of the laundry, made no such complaints, though Harl and his gardeners looked a bit askance at his aid as pruned the winter garden and prepared for spring. 

When her tasks were finally done and orders given, then they would be together until the time came for him to sup with his mother, a meal he would bolt down without tasting, save perhaps to note that Marole was probably correct. Seidr was a great tool, but not a culinary one. Then, before Frigga could stop him, he would be off, finding Aere finishing her meal at the servants table and they would be off.

Up upon the massive hunter he had brought from Asgard, after being sure Aere’s cloak was wrapped about her, her fraying scarf was tied beneath her chin, and her gloves were on, then he would work her hair from its braid so it would fly like a banner from where she rode behind him and they would race through the white darkness of Vanaheim’s winter.

One night they danced in the capitol, in a ballroom made of crystal, conspicuous in all black amidst the crowd in bright reds and blues and pinks and every other colour people wore to fight the drab days. Bored quickly with the crowd, Loki danced Aere out on the veranda, through the snowy streets, to the great lake Tyrkr, where the water froze smooth as glass beneath their feet and they could spin and spin.

Then they lay upon the ice and kissed until it groaned beneath them and the heat pouring from them.

Another night they stayed in the village near the Queen’s estate, at the Inn of the Hunters’ Moon. Loki rolled knuckles bones, cheating on every turn. Aere didn’t like that, so she sang The Elfin Knight, and The Bramble Briar and The Sprig of Thyme and Loki was so distracted he let his marks all win their coin back and some of his as well. Then they sat in the Englenook and drank ale, staring at each other over a candle flame, unable to look away, both quiet for the first time in either of their lives.

Then Loki snapped his fingers over the lamp, so it was dark, and he pulled Aere onto his lap and they would kiss until they could not breathe.

On the last night, they pretended to leave and then lay on Aere’s bed, atop the quilt she had made herself out of old dresses she had outgrown. They faced each other, sharing a pillow, her legs in their wool stockings entwined with his suede, and when they moved there were sparks in the dry air.

Aere touched his face, “We could-”

Loki took her hand, kissing the heel of her palm, “No. Not now. Not when it has only been three days and I am leaving tomorrow. I won’t rush something that should be… well, not rushed at least.”

It cost him dearly to say those words. His teeth ground and his body was sore from wanting her. Every muscle strained towards Aere, his bones wanted to lay atop hers, his mouth wanted to kiss all of her. 

There was a burden on Aere as well. He could see her shaking with need. 

Bor! He could smell it upon her and he felt an animal rise within him, its shoulders tense, its teeth bared. 

With creaking muscles Loki wrapped his arms about her, so they were knotted together, and he vowed to come back in the spring. 

Then they kissed and whispered until the sky was light again.

Word had reached Asgard of Loki and Aere. 

His father refused to speak of what was clearly a Midwinter dalliance, even though he had always made it clear that he would not allow the Princes to meddle with the servants. Aere, however, was more than a mere thrall and so fell into a grey area.

Thor simply slapped his shoulder. “Be good, brother. Don’t lose a friend after this is over.”

His companions were variously amused, even Hogan. Whenever Volstagg or Fandral looked to open their mouths over the matter, the look on Loki’s face stopped even their mindless teasing. He had long since lost his humor over Aere and the low seriousness with which what was between them was being taken.

A few weeks - and forty letters sent between Asgard and Vanaheim - later the Jotunns returned to Asgard to bring Midwinter greetings from their Queen and the crown prince, Leiste. 

“How can they tell if its Midwinter or not?” Loki sniped, bored with the pomp of another court, another procession. 

Thor shrugged, “Because even their balls retreat?”

Frigga gave them a mother’s look that made both of their balls retreat as well.

As ever Nott attended with the envoys, but the allure she had held for him was, if not gone, dimmed, even though she was more beautiful than ever, dressed in gold shot midnight silk, her hair hanging in long coils down to her knees. 

That night, as he moved through the mead hall, she sought him out.

“When last we met I was not able to salute you. I thought to make it up to you.” He had not worn his high boots that day, so she was a bit taller than he was, even in her bare feet. Her voice was low and her eyes held his.

Yes, she was very beautiful.

But not very subtle.

“How do you intend that?” 

“I brought a drink with me from home. One rarely enjoyed by anyone other than the Jotnar. Come, share a glass or two with me, to continued peace between our people.”

Though he was not especially interested in being alone with Nott any longer, the idea of drinking some special, Frost Giant liquor that even Odin had probably not tasted was too good to pass up, so he gestured for her to lead on.

In the receiving room outside of the bedchamber she had been given no fire had been laid, obviously, and the only lights were from cold white spheres that bobbed gently in the air, giving the room a cave-like feel. There was virtually no decorations or comforts, the Jotunns being notoriously austere in their tastes had insisted on all that they considered frivolous removed, leaving little more than the barest essentials of furnishings.

Other than a divan and a few chairs there was only a brass table with an ewer carved of ivory and two goblets. Whatever was in the ewer was so cold it exuded a fine, painfully sweet mist that swirled in the air, and Loki hoped that he would be able to drink it without it freezing his guts solid.

“Rumor tells me you have taken a lover since last we met, Highness.” Her tone was arch.

“I did not know Frost Giants gossiped.”

She laughed, “All courtiers gossip. I imagine in Muspelheim the gossip is especially… inflammatory.”

Loki winced. Not subtle or very funny. 

“But back to your new lover. I understand she’s a Midgardian. How exotic…”

Nott trailed a long, gilded fingernail across his chest as she passed him to lounge on one of the divans. Laid out thus, her height was no less impressive, her bare feet hanging off of the end, her long hair loose and nearly brushing the ground.

Where she had touched his skin ached with cold even through layers of suede, and the silk tunic he wore beneath cracked and broke when he moved to sit on the chair facing her. “Aere is … Aere. She had been my friend for so long that I no longer think of her as being anything other than herself,” he lied. If that were true he would have been able to bring himself to tell her the truth about her home Realm.

“Yet she  _ is  _ Midgardian,” Nott said archly. “They are the rarest of the rare in the remaining Realms. Of course, full-bloods are even rarer, with those short little lives of theirs. Some were kept as breeding stock on one of Jotunheim’s other colonies where the weather was less dangerous to their delicate flesh. Despite their… fragility… they are in great demand amongst those of our kind with a taste for the burning. Only Fire Giants are hotter, and they are impossible for erotic play.”

She leaned forward, her head cocked, her ruby eyes thoughtful, “A full-breed Midgardian female who was actually born on Midgard would be worth a fortune. There is a male I know, a Collector, who would pay more money than even a royal Prince could dream of for her. Though then there is the status of having such a rare toy, that you cannot put a price upon.”

Loki felt his mouth flood with salt as he realized what Nott was implying. What she thought was between Aere and himself. 

Suddenly he found her beauty repugnant, if no less powerful.

He found himself on his feet, hands fisted at his sides, “You forget yourself, Lady. Though you may be a guest in the home of my father I will not have you speak thusly about my friend, my-”

With a swift motion she stood as well, till only a few inches to breathe in lay between them. “Your lover? But how can she be your lover? Love, and friendship, are relations between equals, based on knowledge as well as the flesh. Not,” she looked him up and down, again tracing her nails over him, this time on his arm, “that I would ever deny the power of the flesh. Between you and this mortal there is too much inequality, and too many lies.”

His body throbbed at that simple touch. It was not the feeling he had with Aere, not the keen, razor wanting of her and strange relief that came even before the release, from just being near to her. This was entirely of his body, the urgency like being compressed by rocks, like being bound with no freedom in sight, like poison.

Before Loki could speak again, as for once words would not come - especially the words to refute her claims that would not form - she stepped away to fetch them each a goblet of Jotunn drink he had come for in the first place.

He took it, needing the delay to form his thoughts, scattered by the force of her attraction and the vileness of her words. It smelled sweet, and though he knew it was strong it did not burn going down. Rather it tingled and numbed. Loki was surprised to find how enjoyable he found the sensation and drank again.

“Does she know how her Realm was destroyed? Do you know?” Nott asked and then answered her own question. “Of course not. I am sure the AllFather’s official histories are carefully curated to avoid any mention of his mistakes. Especially when they end in the destruction of an entire world.”

Now the early sickness he felt at her words turned to a kind of righteous anger that felt unnatural to him. Rather more like something Thor might feel. “My father-”

Nott laughed, her head thrown back. The sight of her neck exposed to him flooded Loki with an icy lust that made him want to take that neck in his hand, bare it to his bite, to use to hold her under him and make her bend. Drinking again, he shook his head, trying to clear the image, trying to picture Aere.

The numbing sweetness only made the poison in his blood rage.

“Your father. Yes… your father.” Nott walked about as she spoke, her open-sided gown giving him a glimpse of her flawlessness. “Amongst the Jotnar there is a great weapon, one of the greatest in all of Realms. The Cask of Ancient Winters. In the hands of a normal Jotunn it is a fearful thing, yet in the hands of our king, our trueborn king, it was truly dreadful, bringing down the pure wrath of all that is ice. Yet for all of its power our last king, Laufey, was losing the war for Midgard against King Odin. 

“We have lost so many times to Asgard. So many times. Laufey was determined that he would be the first king in a thousand millennia to defeat the Aesir, so he studied the secrets of the Cask, its history, its abilities and he learned a long-forgotten truth about it. That whilst in the hands of the King of Jotunheim it was deadly, in the heart of the king it was death itself.”

Loki sipped again, following Nott with his eyes rather than his body as he craved, stopping it by pure will, “In his heart? That sounds a bit saccharine for your people, do not you think?”

“It would be,” she conceded, “were it not literal. Almost. A trueborn Jotunn king is able to use his seidr to absorb the Cask somehow, where it will meld with his heart, turning him into the essence of the wrath of winter. So for the first time in known history, our king joined with the Cask and travelled to Midgard to destroy the Asgardian army forever.”

Loki snorted, drinking again, “And we both know how well that went for him.”

Nott’s eyes flashed with rage, her mouth sneered, and the air grew cold. For the first time since she had come to Asgard those years and years before Loki thought he saw her true face. “Yes. We know. Because what my king - my  _ uncle _ \- did not know was that Odin had a weapon of his own. The only weapon that could work against him. An Infinity Stone.”

“My father does not have an Infinity Stone!” Loki objected, sitting with a laugh. This story grew more absurd by the moment. He had broken into the Vaults of Asgard many times to survey the spoils kept there and from time to time borrow one. He would have noticed one of the building blocks of existence if it had been there.

“Perhaps not now, but then, yes. It had been taken from the Dark Elves by his father Bor, which is one case in which I think even we Frost Giants are grateful for Asgardian interference. Called the Aether, whilst no more powerful than the other stones it is especially fearful. It allows its master to bend reality to their will. 

“Laufey’s attack upon Midgard was terrible, sweeping the land before him with ice and wind. When Odin heard the cries of his warriors he took the Aether from its hiding place and went to meet our King in single combat, cowardice not being amongst his flaws.” Then, growing pale, Nott bowed her head, “Apologies.”

Loki, feeling more and more savage as the story went on and his cup grew more empty, realized he had growled at her. Even more shocking than the noise coming from his throat, was the genuine deference in her manner as she continued.

“What neither of them could have suspected, I am certain, was what would happen when the power of the Stone and the might of the Cask as embodied in our king, would do. Odin tried to change the nature of reality it caused the Cask to no longer recognise Laufey as king, but his hold on it was so great that rather than rejecting him it burst into shards, ripping him to pieces and dispersing through the other Realms. 

“The force of the pieces of it, and the backlash of the Reality Stone scourged and scoured Midgard, flattening mountains, ripping away the beautiful waters that were its greatest gift, turning the air to vitriol. Our people are strong enough to survive in the void of space for a time, yet even we fled before the storms of madness and destruction that harrowed that doomed world. The world your fathers destroyed.”

She was back before him.

“My father-”

“When Laufey returned home he was broken, dying. He spent the next century dying as a matter of fact. Whilst he was gone our Queen had given birth to his firstborn. A boy. A boy I was meant to have married, based on the custom of our people we were betrothed even before birth. But he was… he was small, very small. And weak or seemingly so, though the midwives swore the seidr that swirled about him was more than they had ever dreamt of seeing about an infant. 

“The king, knowing that the road the Jotnar walked would be even harder going forward than had been the one behind, decided that his stunted child was a sign of our god's disfavor. The priests easily convinced him that the best way to win that favor back was to return to offer the boy back to them as a sacrifice. In the way of our kind, he left the little prince in the open air of the temple to be destroyed by the cold that he would not be strong enough to withstand. A year later, despite his own festering wounds, Laufey found that his sacrifice had been accepted when the Queen gave birth to another son. Or so we thought.”

Loki’s thoughts were in turmoil and yet his body had never felt stronger. The venomous energy of his desire agitated him, hummed through him, tuned his nerves like wires. It was as if he could run about the length of the Realm, swim the void of space, fuck his way through a hundred bodies, and would still have more power than he could use. 

He looked down at Nott, who had something in her hand that looked like it might be a short blade with no haft. It turned in her fingers, a faint blue light gleaming from it, and Loki was embarrassed to find himself swaying slightly as his eyes tracked its hypnotic light. 

He looked down at Nott though she stood. 

_ How could that be?  _ At best when wearing boots he might be eye to eye with her. He did not care. He cared about her hands, those long fingers, and the little something that they toyed with.

“Do you really think that your near to extinction little pet would want to be the lover of a scion of the two fathers that destroyed her people?” 

Those words made it through some of the mists that enveloped his mind, “Two fathers?”

Nott laid her free hand on his shoulder and stood on her toes to whisper in his ear, all of the while turning and turning that bit of blue metal… no, not metal… Loki tried to focus on what it was as her cold breath thrilled his ear, “Odin and Laufey. The father of your life and the father of your death.”

Her hand stilled. Her arm jerked back. 

She stabbed him through the heart.

The shard of from the Cask of the Ancient Winters, the last piece of it that had remained within Laufey until his death, was colder than the void and sharper than any serpent’s bite. It parted Loki’s inviolate flesh and burrowed, it's mindless will recognizing its born master, desperate to find its way home.

Piercing his tenacious, sinewy Jotunn heart, it nestled deep within where it would fight being ripped forth again. 

Loki screamed.

He screamed as his flesh and then heart were invaded and his nature was altered. He had known he was a shapeshifter since he was a boy, though he used that gift rarely so he might keep it his own secret. Only his family knew. When he changed it was like hot water and melted wax moving his bones, effortless if sometimes ticklish. 

This ripped and tore and recreated against his will. When Odin had found him in the temple those decades and more ago - an infant’s memory now as vivid as the agony of his reforming self - Loki had impressed on him like an infant bird, changing himself to look like the creature that could save him. 

The humiliation of it burned him even as his blood ran cold as a northern ocean. To be cast aside and picked up. Unwanted, less than unwanted, for he was meant to die, and then to be taken in and deceived all of his life, given no truth to hang his identity upon and thus to be battered by every wind of Odin’s giving and withholding of favor, or Thor’s apparent superiority even in those cases when he was clearly inferior, or what had to be Frigga’s pitying sort of love when she looked at the abandoned pup her husband brought home to her.

Only Aere had-

Aere.

Little more than a thrall, homeless, alone, all that she might have had, all that she might have been, destroyed by the selfish squabbling of his two... not fathers. Creators rather, for he was their creature rather than either of their son.

Aere.

When he thought of her the pain in his head was like spikes being driven within it. He clutched his hair, yanking, hoping it would distract from the agony that had him rolling on the floor, sobbing out scream after scream of anguish. 

No, the spikes were being driven out of it. Bone shifted and thickened and shattered and reformed and blood poured from his scalp into his eyes, his nose, into his mouth. Blood pumped from a heart as cold as ice and blue as the sky.

Slowly the pain ebbed away as the cold grew from his center outwards, as his aching skin scrolled with raised caste marks as sensitive as the flesh of a babe though hard as callous, until he found his hands and knees, gasping and shaken. 

Then one foot was beneath him and then the other. His fine clothing now little more than tatters, fell from him.

His horns, black and colder even than the rest of him, brushed the cloth of gold hanging from the high ceiling, cutting it as effortlessly as the shard of the Cask had opened him.

He looked at his hands, at the black talons on his fingers, and a smile cut his lips.

Nott, who had moved to the edge of the room when he had writhed in torment, slowly moved towards him, her eyes large, her face afraid. Not daring to look at him, she knelt at his feet.

“My King,” she said reverently. Greedily. 

Loki knew she was his body’s mate. He offered her his hand, which she kissed and nuzzled, and worshipped.

He felt not the slightest twinge knowing that his frozen heart no longer had one.

  
  
  



	7. The First Step of a Journey is Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aere is alone.

Loki did not return. 

Other things happened in the time to come. A few things, for life was slow on Vanaheim. Aere took on Diole’s place in the Queen’s household, though she did not wish to fill the roll. A new greenhouse was built near the forest. Seasons changed. Children grew. 

Meals were eaten.

Nights were long and quiet.

Days were tiring and filled.

Aere was lonely.

At first she had sent letters. Short ones in which she told him little bits of day to day business and tried to not tell him how she missed him, or dwell upon what had been between them so briefly. 

There were no answers.

Rather than stopping, she wrote more, and at greater length. Even though she knew that she would come to regret those pages Aere could not stop herself from each night sitting at the scarred wood work table in the kitchen, when all was quiet save those working in the night garden and the bakers in the outbuilding setting bread to proof for the morning and night birds in the trees, when she could pretend he was near and they were far from Vanaheim.

She would pour herself a cup of wine, place an ink bottle at her elbow, spread out sheets of the finest white paper taken from the household stores, and would write until her hand ached.

Pages and pages she would write, of what she feared and what she hoped, of the busy emptiness of her days and the dullness of her nights. Pages that she would then neatly fold and place in an envelope and tell herself to place in the fire rather than send. But send them she would, letter after letter, for to not send them would be to admit that those few days they had were to nothing, barely a fond memory, in his long, full life, and that they would be the  _ only _ thing that had ever happened to her.

Then one night she did not. 

She poured her cup of wine and took it to the gardens and watched the night flowers bloom.

From time to time as the years passed a pretty fellow or clever maiden might, on one of those nights when she went to town, approach Aere to dance, or drink, or flirt. But soft whispers would quickly make to them that she was ...somehow connected to Asgard’s dark prince, about whom sinister rumors and uncomfortable stories had grown common, and they would fade away with sheepish apologies.

She was destined to neither have Loki, nor any other, just days and more days, she thought. 

When Queen Frigga returned now and then she seemed increasingly harried, her grand calm and regal equilibrium disturbed. Though no one dared to ask her why - Diole alone would have been so forward or liable to be answered - there was little doubt that the increasing troubles in Asgard’s empire and that many of them were suspected of being caused by her youngest and favorite child were what troubled their fair mistress.

At no time did Frigga to speak to Aere about Loki, though there were many times over the years as she listened to reports on the estate, the house, the staff, where she seemed about to say something that would surely have to be about the prince only to stop herself. And Aere could not bring herself to speak to the queen, for the knowing pity in her eyes would have been past bearing.

It was summer of the year that Aere had told herself would be her last on Vanaheim and the morning was high when two Einherjar arrived at the house, summoning Aere. She met them on the front stairs of the house, uncertain as to what would be appropriate for the situation, unprecedented as it was.

The soldiers of Asgard always made Aere nervous, perhaps because their presence spoke of the perpetual possibility of violence.  _ Or perhaps,  _ she heard Loki’s voice whispering in her ear,  _ because their helmets made her think of them as giant beetles with spears. A terrifying thought, indeed. Armed insects, considering how many of their brethren she’d slaughtered over the years as part of her duties. _

“Mistress, the queen commands you to attend her on Asgard,” one of them said.

Within her mind Aere said no. She laughed and said no and then laughed again and turned on her heel and tossed aside the apron that covered her crow black skirts and she was glad she had worn her good walking boots, for walk she did. Out of the great manor house, down the white gravel road that led to it, stared at all of the while by Einherjar and servants and any other creature who wondered what she was doing and where she thought to go. She walked and walked, passing the formal gardens, and then the ones that served the kitchen, and then those that held magic and healing herbs and then the tiers of where tea was farmed and then the forest. Her legs and feet never tired as they were when she traversed the same space for the sake of serving another. 

She walked and walked until that service fell away from her, and then the queen’s regard, and then her own sense of duty, and then Loki.

That was what stopped those long steps she took in her mind.

Loki clung to her shoulders, his fingers clawing into her flesh, his teeth deep in her throat, like a vampire. He would not be shed. Not by merely walking away.

So she curtsied to the guard, “I’ll gather my things.”

To ride the Bifrost for the first time was like being in a dream that continually threatened to turn into a nightmare. The whole of the universe was less than a pin-prick away from swallowing her - first in too much sound and color and then in ice and nothingness.

But they arrived at Asgard too soon, at that very moment that she had resigned herself to the idea of it, where it even started to seem like a pleasant alternative. When their feet settled and her stomach followed, Aere felt as if she had run the distance rather than having been pulled.

Heimdal was exactly as he had been described time and again, seeming more monument than man. His perfect, stern features were emotionless and his eyes glowed gold as they reflected the entirety of the Nine. Aere expected no acknowledgement from him. Why would the most important being in Asgard, save the royal family themselves, chose to recognize a servant, but when she walked past the site of his vigilance he inclined his head ever so slightly.

“Welcome to Asgard,  _ kvenna _ .”

Startled, and being hurried along by the einherjar, she was able to offer the smallest curtsey in response. 

The causeway towards the capitol and palace was an extension of the Bifrost, one that ran underfoot and rang like crystal as they crossed it towards the city. 

Where Vanaheim was dark green and polished wood, scented with woodsmoke and herbs from the hearths of its people, warmth found in winter and the cool breeze that comforts on a hot day, Asgard was an implacable series of edifices, beautiful but more like the tombs of great heroes than homes. All was pale gold and silver, under a sky that was so blue it looked like had been painted by a master’s hand. 

Perhaps it had. The ancient All-Fathers had created the floating Realm by will and power, no bit of it having been left to chance, the wildness of it banished to a few places outside of the city - for the Asgardians loved bloodsport and the illusion of challenge that came from monster hunting. 

Aere had always prefered fishing. 

She hadn’t been in ages.

She wondered when she left the queen’s service is she could find somewhere to throw a line into the water.

Frigga was not serene when Aere was brought to the small receiving room where the queen paced and fiddled with her fingers in that way she did when the world was not as she wished it to be.

“Aere,” she said, smiling and crossing the room, her hands out as if greeting a friend. “You may leave us,” she said, dismissing the Einherjar whilst leading her to a low divan. “How was the journey? For many their first time on Bifrost can be… disconcerting, but it time most grow to … well, very few actually enjoy it but it can but exhilarating. Have some wine, it will help revive you.”

The queen poured a goblet from a golden spouted ewer with her own hands, and Aere took it more from shock than any desire to drink. She sipped a little - it was dark with wood and spices - before speaking.

“Majesty, you are very kind, but I am well. You called me, so what do you require?”

Frigga was clearly taken aback, both at the directness of Aere’s words and her depleted, disinterested tone. Nonetheless, she nodded and then, before answering rose to pace as she did so. “Yes. I know that word of … matters in the rest of the Realms have most probably reached you on Vanaheim. About the difficulties we have had. Disruptions to commerce. Small wars. Allies falling out. It has been… trying.”

The queen spoke slowly, as if building to something that she did not want to say. Aere sipped again, feeling her muscles loosen, including her tongue.

“This is about Loki, is it not? I am sorry, Majesty, but if you wish my thoughts on your son I have none.”

Frigga, in a cloud of silken fabric sat beside her and took her free hand in both of her own, “I know that he has not been to see you in some time, so it would be a good time for you to visit him.”

Then all was clear.

Aere, unable to stop herself, pulled her hand free. “So the rumors are true. Loki is at the root of Asgards troubles but Odin cannot prove it and you do not understand it so you wish me to … influence him. To use me to find out what is in his mind. After your words. After your telling us that we did not belong together.”

“Aere, I-”

Now she stood, finishing the wine, and offering a curtsey, feeling a little drunk having something so strong so early in the day. 

“You were correct, Majesty. I am nothing to him, as you guessed would happen I am sure. May I return to Vanaheim now? There is laundry to be done, I’m sure.”

“But you just arrived,  _ dýrr _ ,” purred a dark, sarcastic voice from behind her.

Her head swam a bit. From the wine. From the voice. From his presence.

Aere’s fingers tightened about the ornate, heavy goblet until they hurt. Had she been Aesir it would have turned to slag in her grip, and as it was her hand was stiff and painful when she carefully placed it on a table before turning. Had she kept hold of it there was little doubt in her mind that it would have gone winging at Loki’s face the moment she beheld him. 

She was prepared to leave the queen’s service, she was not prepared to change her residence to Asgardia’s dungeons for assaulting a prince.

It did not matter. For when she saw him she would have dropped the goblet at any rate.

All that had remained when last they had been together of the boy who stole horses to amuse her and climbed trees with her that they might be alone and made stories out of smoke so she would marvel was gone. In his place was a man who with an amused, distant smile, and cool eyes like he was looking at an object that he might choose to decorate a side-table.

That he was lavishly gorgeous was just extra cruelty. He had always been beautiful, but he was handsome now as well, his features now were those of a painting created a bold, firm hand, rather than the piece delicate inkwork that he had once been. Though his long body was still lean his shoulders were wider, his thighs - as shown off by the ridiculous fashions of Asgard - were strong and there was a stillness to him that was new as well. Where when she had known he had always given the impression he was agitated, ready to take flight at a moment, now there was the assured stillness of a man.

His eyes widened and he stopped smiling, “What? No greeting for me? I, for one, dropped all important matters, left things undone,” he walked slowly towards her, gesturing behind him, “avoided the importunate words of ambassadors and courtiers at the merest wisp of a rumour that you had come to Asgardia. Even though it had been kept from me by others,” he glanced over Aere’s shoulder at his mother. “As if anything can be kept from me, should it be something I truly want.”

Aere had never heard Loki speak so to Frigga, amused and scornful that she thought to have any advantage over him. 

“Yes, your spy network is most impressive, my son,” the queen replied. 

He gave a little laugh and walked over to kiss Frigga’s cheek, “Thank you, mother. It’s always a pleasure to be recognized for one’s gifts, few and little though they may be,” he said, sprawling beside her, gesturing to the wine and looking at Aere. When she did not move he put his hand out and raise his brows at her expectantly.

For a moment she could not move. The room was cold and so was she, and still a little dizzy and she could not believe he meant for her to serve him. 

They stared at each other, his expression of pleasant bemusement at her not serving him raking through her heart like claws.

Finally, unable to bear it, Frigga filled another goblet and placed it in her son’s waiting hand. “Please, Aere, sit down,” she all but begged. All but, for queens did not beg, certain they did not beg their servants.

She was about to do so when Loki smiled at her again and added, “Yes, Aere, do sit. You must have so few chances to rest yourself. We know you are so busy doing such good work for mother at her estate. Making sure everything is as it should be. We are all so impressed with how you just slipped into Diole’s role with no effort at all.” He leaned forward, forearm draped gracefully over a knee. “Like you were  _ born _ to serve, one might say.”

The tips of her fingers and toes felt like they had turned to ice, and her drink dizzied brain hurt. She hurt elsewhere. She hurt everywhere.

“Thank you, Highness,” she said with a small bow, “It’s always a pleasure to be recognized for one’s gifts, few and little though they may be. And now I must be returning to them.”

“No, no...you have just arrived, and I know that mother had need of you here, but alas her telling you what that might be,” he rolled his eyes as he stood, “shall have to wait. I have been sent to fetch her to father’s side for some matter of great import. So great that it required the one of his sons, this one of his sons at any rood, to deliver it personally. Allow me to show you to your room, as we are old friends, and then she can send for you when she has the freedom to do so. Goodbye, mother, tell the king I achieved the great task he set for me in finding you, with some grace.”

As he spoke he crossed the room, took the goblet from Aere’s hand which disappeared at his touch, placed her hand upon his forearm and whisked her out of the door before either she or Frigga could protest.

The halls of the palace were cold and quiet. In the distance Aere could hear booted feet walking in step, wind moving through the long corridors, and now and then the rough caws of Odin’s ravens. She was glad she had worn her own boots and had not changed from her daily work attire, for it was hard enough to keep up with Loki’s long stride without having slippers and long skirts to worry about.

The Loki of her before, her Loki, she would have told to slow down, or she would have simply stopped and made him face her and explain himself. This cold, ironic man, with his cruel eyes was entirely a prince and no one that she knew.

When her Loki would touch her hand it would burn. When he did so it seemed to do so as well, but it was the burn of something too cold to be tolerated.

Now and then she would open her mouth and think of something to say or ask, or a tart word or two, but then she would look at that face, with its thin, unkind mouth and the viciousness in the line of his jaw and she would fall back to silence. Better to endure whatever amusement he was taking from her in silence and then slip away back home when she was no longer under the scrutiny of those poison green eyes.

“Ah, here we are…” he murmured as they reached a pair of grand, large door. They were made of metal, the cool shade of platinum, and pale wood, decorated with golden nails. Because of their size Aere assumed that they lead to another part of the palace, but when they opened at a gesture from Loki they revealed series of private rooms. 

Before she could question, he had taken her through a small public room, an office, a library, all lavishly and coldly styled, ending in a massive bedchamber, where a bed befitting its grandeur was draped in green velvet and furs.

It was clearly NOT a servant’s room. She turned slowly, “This is-”

“Mine,” he answered, taking her upper arm too tightly and pulling her into a kiss that felt like a wound.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. To Be Remade One is First Unmade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki and Aere become reacquainted and secrets are learned.

Aere’s mouth was too hot. 

Too hot for one who had been educated in pleasure by a Jotunn. 

There was a burst of exquisite agony, with her tongue burning against his where she met him rather than shrinking from the kiss, having perhaps forgotten who Aere was. The hard expires of her breath scorched him, scalding like drinking boiling water straight from the kettle, then running down his throat, trickling through his veins like phosphorus, leaving his body incandescent and oddly weak.

Loki had expected her to push him away, to try and pull free. He had planned to let her. He planned to chase her away, using her sorrow and betrayal to punish his mot- Frigga, to punish Frigga for  _ her _ betrayal and lies. Even when he had seen he for the first time in so long she had meant nothing to him. Just a skinny, plain-faced servant he had once bothered with, who was a nonentity, beneath the notice of an Asgardian Prince, let alone the heir to Jotunheim.

That the shards of the Casket of Ancient Winters within his heart stirred and clicked when he saw her was but a coincidence. 

The newest one, the first he had placed himself, his fourth, and the largest - recovered from the necklace of an unwilling countess with large gambling debts on Vanaheim - had simply not settled into place yet. It was the largest of the three, a hands’ width wide and long as a dueling dagger, yet as thin as a razor.

The pain of settling it, of the cold, had made his head ache. It still ached, even these hours later, as if he had stabbed himself there, rather than through the heart. 

Loki’s head ached with each shard. The pain in his chest was nothing to it, just a stab hard enough to kill and then it was done with no mark or as much as a bruise to show for it. But his head throbbed, his eyes feeling pressed from behind like they were caught in a vise. Sometimes he would find it hard to concentrate. Sometimes he did not remember clearly what would happen afterwards. It was why Nott had insisted on setting the first three herself. First he would be wild, his racing, unsettled brain full of schemes that he needed to enact right away. Ideas that his blood was now cold enough to tolerate. 

He would do  _ things _ . With Nott at his side. Always at his side. 

His mind spinning on to the next act. To the next bit of sabotage of his brother. The next bit of subversion of Odin’s power. Things making him angry, making him seethe and then lust and then sorrow and then laugh.

Then, when the pain was too much Nott would lay in bed with him, her long, icy body easing him as she stroked his head and whispered to him about what had been and what was to come, all in an ancient form of Jotunn that he could barely parse but that worked like music on his mind and nerves until he could sleep. And when he woke the world was clearer to him as he was colder. 

He needed her now. His queen. Loki had been so eager to place the new shard, to not wait, to prove to her as well as himself that he did  _ not _ need her. But he did. His head was swimming and he was letting himself be burned alive by his mother’s slave. 

Aere…

Thinking her name he fell further into her, kissing her as if he would die if he stopped, rather than being killed by going on, which is what it felt like as well.

Loki tried to be rational, a thing he always fought for whenever a new shard shifted and cut and found it’s seat in his heart. Of course Aere felt too hot, with her ridiculous mortal life like a wavering torch under her flesh. The apple she’d been given may have altered her life, but her essential being would forever be this lesser thing. 

_ Of course, _ she felt too hot. What misery to burn, to melt when he had spent so much time learning the more refined brutality of Nott’s icy, clenching body and gifted hands. When his mate writhed beneath him, speared on his cock and begging, her talons clawing his caste marks, he felt like the king he was born to be. 

Yet still, he sagged back against the door, pulling Aere with him, digging his free hand into her hair. Everywhere his skin touched hers branded him to the bone and kept right on burning, though what could be deeper than bone Loki did not know. He did not care. He only wanted to ignite.

He remembered Nott’s words. About Midgardian slaves and the Jotnar who grew addicted to their heat and loathed himself for the weakness he felt. 

It took more effort than Loki liked to sneer. Normally it was effortless as if his lips had been created for sneering alone. But kissing Aere seemed more natural to them at the moment.

He mastered himself. How else could he be the master of two realms if he could not reign over himself?

“Ehehehehe … so eager. But then, it has been a long time, hasn’t it, pet?” Loki drew a finger down her cheek, drinking it in as alert shock and wariness displaced the languorous desire in those wide, brown eyes that he loved so much.

Loved?

Shaking himself, he thrust her carefully away from him. That weakness was in his past as well. “Not to fear, I’ll give you what you want, but first, pour me a glass of wine.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, hands behind his back, lifting the corner of his mouth, “You are a servant. So… Serve me. Like you were raised to. Bought for. Born to.” Then he kissed her forehead. Just a peck. Like one might give their favorite dog.

“Why are -”

Loki cut her off, placing the very tip of his finger against her lips. 

It was icy cold and woke her up from the beautiful dream she was having. It had to be a dream, like all of the other ones she’d had over and over since Loki had left her behind. A dream that laid it’s long-fingered hand between her legs and whispered in her ear that she should ride.

“Being like this?” He sounded grandly sad, mocking the woebegone tone that she hated in her own voice. Then he smiled, his lips closed, thin, vulpine, his eyes bright with spite, as his face darted close to hers, “Because I can. Because you are little more than a slave and you make it so easy. Wake up, little slave, my …  _ mother  _ was right. What can really between us? I know. Do you?” 

The green of his eyes was just the thinnest ring of poison around the black of his iris. “Poor thing…” he crooned. 

Aere jerked back from him, refusing to blink, trying not to cry, as misery and perfidy poisoned her heart and turned her blood to sick. 

Though Loki had been the one to stop kissing her, to move her away from him, now he refused to give her space, stepping forward as she moved away, step for relentless step. For a moment it was almost a pleasure that she was annoyed with herself for feeling. Something about being hunted made heat coil through her belly, her blood, between her legs. And she had already been hot despite how oddly cold he had felt when he’d pulled her close, even when he pushed her away.

But after a few moments, the pursuit turned to his strolling towards her, an eyebrow raised, a bored smile on his face. “Where do you think you’re going, pet?” He spat the last word again. 

Unknowingly she had crossed the entire room and her back was against the wall beside his ridiculous bed. For a moment she felt bad for the poor maids whose job it was to redress that monster bit of furnishing every morning, for she was sure her former friend would insist on fresh linens each day.

Loki put a forearm on the wall over her head, his hand in a fist, and loomed over her. The smile was gone, replaced by anger, the anger that had been simmering beneath his cruel words and indifferent behavior since he’d returned to her. 

The side of his fist hit the wall and the plaster and lath cracked in a spiral and there was a soft rasp as dust slid down the paint.

“You cannot evade me, Aere,” he rasped at her, “you  _ cannot  _ evade me. I won’t allow it.” Changing again. How many Lokis had he been from the moment he had entered the Queen’s tiring room until this one? More than she could count.

Joking cruelly, kissing her like he could not stop, ordering her about, looking cold, looking hot.

Looking mad.

Aere lifted a hand, lightly touching his temple, “What is wrong with you?” No matter how hateful he was, he was her Loki, her friend, her dearest friend, even if he was nothing else that would be enough for her. 

If only he would stop!

He snatched her hand away, squeezing it, and then lowered it to rest upon the thick bar of his cock where it thrust against the thick leather of his trews. A low moan forced its way out of her and she felt swollen and painful. 

Loki’s thin mouth traced over her neck, kissed her jaw, nipped her ear. “Serve me…”

His breath was freezing and now she was too. She carefully let him go and stood upright, meeting his gaze blandly, emotionlessly, “You wished me to bring you wine, so allow me go and fetch you one, Highness.” She took refuge in what she knew, standing straight and with the dignity of one long schooled in service. 

She had long since come to hate being a servant, but to be forced to perform so before Loki made her feel degraded by it for the first time. 

He laughed again, ”You know me, Aere. Changeable as the wind. I want wine, I don’t want wine. You are my friend,” then his tone turned dark, “you are not my friend. And with all of that, I find there is one thing unchangeable and unchanged within me. To my surprise and chagrin, I find myself still having a taste for your humble self. An unexpected, perhaps unpleasant surprise, but a powerful one nonetheless.”

Moving faster than she could see, he grasped her hips, lifting, and pinned her with his own against the wall, her wrists pinned over her head with one hand, her face forced towards his with the other. Like a specimen that had not died yet, Aere writhed against him, trying to fight her way free. 

His body was as cold and hard as a diamond, the rigid bar of his sex dug painfully into her, and Aere hated that she wanted to stay like that, so close she could not truly see his face, only the fine blade of his nose, the edge of his cheek, the lifted corner of his lip.

Then he kissed her. 

She bit his lip hard enough to make even his immortal skin bleed.

And then licked the drops from his jaw.

For a moment he was astonished enough to stop and it killed any resistance in her when in that same moment he looked like himself. Her friend. Her Loki. 

His eyes large, his brows raised, a bit of a bemused smile on his face. “Aere, you have damned good teeth!”

Then he quirked his brow and gave a silly leer, so again like his old self that it was as if Loki had finally arrived. “Though not as good as mine,” he added, closing them hard where her throat met her shoulder, while he pressed a wide-spread hand over the small of her back. Her head fell back, wanting him to bite her again, to worry her flesh like a wolf, because if that hard nip felt that good then surely being devoured would be pleasure beyond words.

He kissed and sucked the spot, his mouth warmer than it had been before for still cool, making her nipples prickle. Aere wasn’t an innocent, she knew Loki was marking her, she even knew somewhere in her head that later she would look at that mark and hate him for it. But not then. Her hand buried itself in his hair, so thick and wilder than she ever remembered it. One of his long thighs slid between her legs, his knee thudding on the wall as she scraped her nails on his scalp and writhed, moaning.

“Aere…” he murmured against her skin, “I missed you. I missed you and I missed you and I did not know it was gutting part of me … leaving me hollow.”

She wanted to ask what had filled him in her place, but she couldn’t because of his mouth on her, because of his hand cupping her breast and his thumb rubbing her nipple over and over through the cheap cloth of her uniform, pitching everything in her higher and higher until she thought it could make glass break.

Loki pulled her away from the wall and onto his bed, kissing her and unbuttoning the top of her dress so he could suck on the nipple he’d teased through the thin linen of her shift. Aere grabbed his hair, grabbed the blankets, grabbed at everything to keep from being thrown off of the world. 

He looked at her, a pleased look on his face, and a warm, half-smile, “You are delicious, and I have been starving,” his hand caressed her knee, then slid upwards, the calluses of his palm catching on her stockings, rasping her through the wool, until he reached the undergarment she wore and gently scratched along the cotton covering her seam, making her feel too much. “But this is sure to be sweeter.”

Then he slithered down her body, pushing her skirts out of the way as he knelt beside the bed, jerking the panties so the seams gave, leaving her wet and cold and open the air and his gaze.

Aere lifted herself onto her elbows, certain he wasn’t about to do what he seemed about to do. Something that she’d heard about… No matter what else he was a prince, a god, the one to be venerated and she was-

She screamed, falling back onto the bed when his cool tongue licked deeply between her labia, her cunt starting to beat like the heart of a hunted animal.

“So much sweeter,” he said, and she could feel him smiling against her before returning to his work. Aere’s hips lifted and dropped again and again, her hands hurt from grasping the velvet, and Loki was relentless, his aristocratic nose rubbing against her clit, his clever mouth doing things she couldn’t understand but that she wanted more of. 

“You’re enkindled, your little hearth is burning me to a cinder,  _ fjársjóður _ ,” Loki said, using a word from a language she did not know. He shrugged her legs over his shoulders and she ground herself on his tongue until he thrust one of his long fingers into her to stroke at something while he sucked at her pearl and the growing pleasure, greater than any she’d had in her dreams of him, or her fantasies with her own hand, reached a harrowing place.

Aere froze and arched and gushed over him, the tension and misery that had locked in her for so long expiating itself for the time at least in a release that throbbed through her, leaving a wonderful exhaustion in its wake.

Her eyes barely open, when Loki fell back onto her with care to not crush her, kissing her mouth so she could taste herself, so he could praise her and tell her again and again how badly he had needed her, all of the while keeping a hand cupped over her, his palm circling so she came again, more quietly, more beautifully because he kissed her as it happened. 

“We are never to be apart again,” he whispered fiercely, as he tenderly removed her clothing, hastily pushing his own off as well. “Promise me.”

“I’m never the one to leave,” she forced the words out. She was so tired. “I’m cold.”

Loki pushed back the blankets and buried her under them. The silken sheets were lightly brushed and the pillows were mountainous. Aere had never believed she could be so comfortable as when he climbed in behind her, so she could rest her head on his arm and he could wrap about her.

Aere wanted to ask him so many things, and she certainly expected him to spread her legs again and take her, but rather he kissed her cheek and told her to sleep, tracing a bit of seidr - she could feel the brush of it on her skin - over her so she did. 

Falling asleep, again she heard him say, “Mine…” but oh, how different it was.

  
  
  


Aere woke, freezing.

Loki was still holding her and the velvets and furs that he had piled on the bed and over her were still in place as well. Groggy, and sore in a way that she liked, Aere opened her eyes. 

On the bed beside her, sprawled on her side and leaning up on her arm, was a naked Frost Giant female of almost impossible beauty, with perfect, indigo skin, curls the color of coal just pulled from the earth, and sweeping markings bedecking and gracing her terribly large, perfect body. 

Aere felt scrawny and helpless, shrinking back against Loki.

The giantess smiled at her not unkindly, her glowing eyes looking amused as she brushed a painfully cold finger down Aere’s throat, pulling the blankets off of her, surveying her body in a … proprietary way. “My king,” she said, her voice throaty and amused. “What a pretty little pet. Will you share her with your queen?” There was a coo to her tone.

Loki stirred and stretched, so Aere fell onto the bed, “Rest,” he said to her with a smile before turning his back to her, facing the Frost Giant.

“No, Nott, she is-” he started to say more but before he could the Jotunn woman reached out and lay her hand over his heart, her fiery eyes wide and joyous.

“You have been busy, majesty! I can feel the strength of the Casket has grown within you. It is time, time to go, finally!”

At her touch Loki shuddered, a motion that was half erotic, half agony, shaking him from the bones out. Aere felt her eyes grow wider as she watched scrolling marks, not unlike the woman’s but not the same, roll over his body, turning his body blue, like the sky at dawn in the heart of winter. His hair turned from curls into a pelt like a briar, and when he turned back to look down at her his eyes were redder than blood.

He leaned over Aere, pushing a bit of hair from her eyes, his expression unreadable, the marks upon his face changing the landscape of the man she knew. Her body hurt from the cold of the two Frost Giants so close to her.

The lock of hair froze and broke off, scattering across the pillows. 

“Yes,” he answered the woman. Then he touched a finger, just the barest tip of it, to the mark he had left on Aere’s shoulder.

The cold of it burned and burned and burned, marking the skin black to the bone.

“There,” he said, “now no one will dare touch you when we go to Jotunheimr, they will all see you belong to their king.”

  
  



	9. Home is Where the Throne is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki arrives on Jotunheim

  
  


Walking regally at Loki’s side, Nott wore the traditional kilt and boots of a Jotnar warrior. They and the tooled leather jerkin that covered her magnificent breasts were black and studded with gold and emeralds in his honor, as were the crossed baldricks she wore, twin swords swinging low at her hips.

Loki himself came unarmed, as befit a foreign prince visiting a queen - even a dowager queen - in her own bastion. 

Or what remained of it.

The massive throne room of Jotunheim - nearly as long as that of Asgard, if not quite so wide - was more truly a throne ruin, Loki thought, observing the details of the wreckage and residue of his birthright. 

Whether from lack of resources or as a sign of respect for their long fallen and never replaced king, the Frost Giants had done little to repair the damage done at the end of the war with Asgard. 

The darkly gleaming black stone walls streaked with green mica and silver were broken in many places, like some great creature had taken bites or handfuls from them. Below, the floor looked to have originally been one gigantic slab of mirror-polished basalt. Now it was broken into irregular pieces. Here and there were massive, spider-web cracks and deep gouges and scrapes from where part of the vaulted ceiling and its surprisingly graceful buttresses had apparently fallen to the Aesir onslaught and later been dragged away.

Loki looked up at the remnants of its arched glory. The majority of it was gone, showing the dying, roseate light of a Jotunheimr day and a sky blacker than his own thoughts. That would be the first thing he saw to the repair of, so even the very palace would bow to him when he walked next across this open floor as it’s King.

Though lacking the perfection of the palace on Asgarda, Loki could see the crude yet magnificent beauty that had once been there.

The only light now was from the rising moon and a few torches of frost fire along the walls. As if the dimness would hide the truth that Jotunheimr had fallen so very far.

His booted steps rang through the impossible silence. Ominous, echoing, a warning that change had come for those wise enough to recognize the truth of it in his face.

The cold was beyond description, a thing that lured and seduced his soul even as it rejected and repelled his Asgardian form. Though layered in velvet, heavy leathers, and furs, his fingers felt brittle and his toes numb. His body ached with tension and longed to transform, to revel in his birthright. Loki steeled himself, calling on the ice within his heart to keep him from stuttering when he spoke. 

When she had come to his rooms with her news Nott had also brought an offering to her king. Two more, enormous shards of the Casket of Ancient Winters as well as several smaller pieces that glittered like gemstones in the palm of his hand. Those he had poured into a goblet and drank them with ice wine from his homeworld, using his will to move them in his body. It was simple. The Casket wanted to be whole, the pieces sought his heart.

Then, because she had been so good, he lay back upon his bed and allowed Nott to place the larger shards within his heart. 

For a moment, Loki had hesitated at the sight of them. They were by far the largest pieces they had found. When Nott wrapped her hand about the first one it had seemed more like an assassination attempt than her gifting him with archaic power. 

“If you are not ready, my king, or are uncertain-” Nott had started to pull away.

He reached out, squeezing her hand tight around the shard so her blood flowed into him when he forced it down and into his chest, his flesh and sinew all but opening itself in its eagerness to take in more power.

Beside him, Aere, wrapped up against the dual cold of their bodies and in a deep, enchanted sleep, had shifted uneasily when he arched up into the pain that had subsided quickly, leaving him panting with more pleasure than agony this time so utterly frozen was his heart now. 

Nott had wanted to celebrate further and had all but pouted when he again told her that his Midgardian was not for sharing.

“I shall wait until you are in a more generous mood when we are on Jotunheim, my king,” she had finally said, giving up for the nonce, with an extra fire in her garnet eyes that said she was certain she could convince him later.

Aere…

He gave her half a thought where she lay, nestled in a bed of the most lavish furs he could put his hands to, stolen for the All-father’s bed itself and hidden in Nott’s rooms. It would go badly if a servant should stumble upon her there too soon. 

Then he set thoughts of her aside. There were more pressing matters before him.

The thrones of Jotunheim were on a high dais, and looked like they were made of spikes of ice that had been gathered like sheaves of wheat to be twisted and formed into two very uncomfortable looking pieces of furniture. 

Those would have to change as well. Loki refused to be anything less than perfectly at his ease when sitting in state. 

Queen Fárbauti sat on the throne to the right. Even it had seen damage, as several of the decorative spikes along the top of its high back were broken off. She was alone on the royal stage, the few courtiers and guards that were gathered in the hall stood in a line below it, their heads at the level of her bare feet. Unlike Nott, she dressed wore only an unadorned, unbelted dress of raw flax, a widow’s traditional garb on Jotunheimr. Her hair was shorn to but a few, fur-like inches around her head. It was clear she rarely wore the massive ice crown of the Royal consort, for it bit into her forehead and Loki could see a few drops of her indigo blood were frozen to it like sapphires.

The throne to the right was empty and gave the impression of having been so for a long time. Unlike the one to the left, it was in perfect repair. 

Awaiting a new master.

Loki halted at what on Asgard was a respectful but not obsequious distance from the throne, offering a sketch of a bow, waiting to be recognised by the Queen.

Before him, the lined row of harsh faced Jotunn nobility - their hides etched with the caste marks of generations of warriors and clans full of those who were fast to murder before murder was done to them as they climbed to power - knew better than to offer a sneer to an Odinson, much as they may long to. 

The guards were more grey than blue, of a lower order or perhaps a slightly different species than the nobles. Their skin was more stone than ice, their faces more hewn than crafted. He could not even see them breathing.

Only his own breath piped visibly in the frigid air.

For a moment, calibrated as carefully as his own bow had been - but in this case to show scorn but not contempt - Fárbauti spoke whilst looking over his head, “Prince Loki, Odinson, Friggasget, Liesmith, God of … Troublesomeness, Netweaver. I welcome you to the court of Laufey the Fallen. Our -daughter-who-might-have-been, Nott speaks highly of your bravery and cunning. What are the Allfather’s words?”

Loki smiled pleasantly at the nobles who stared at him in their queen’s place.

“Queen Fárbauti, Dangerous Hitter, Striker of the Tree, Gleaming Moon, I do not come on the business of Odin, but rather the business of my father.”

With a frown, she looked down upon him. 

Loki saw it, the resemblance between them - the shape of the eyes, the caste marks that graced his neck, though Nott told him he favored Laufey far more.

“Explain yourself, trickster,” the queen ordered, clearly annoyed.

He raised a brow and smirked, throwing off his great velvet coat to reveal the traditional Jotnar garb beneath, his body now changing so quickly that his heart was nearly subsumed by the Casket. The shudder of the horns leaving his head made the broken ceiling tremble and the stretch of his bones as he forced himself to grow, ached and burned and gave him the greatest satisfaction. 

Snow began to fall through what was left of the roof, drawn by the icy winds that came to his silent call.

The cold, radiant glow of the pieces of the Casket within him illuminated the hall, throwing a stark clarity on its miseries.

The guards tensed nearly as one, the first time that Loki had seen any movement on their parts. One tightened his hand around the iron shaft of his halberd, another opened her fingers where her hand hung at her side, so she might quickly be able to form an ice dagger or grasp the sling that swung from her belted hip.

It was nothing to the reactions of the nobles, who were clearly less stoic than those that killed for them.

One, an ancient fellow with a face cragged like a mountainside, cursed in an ancient version of Jotnar, calling their gods to smite this shapeshifting interloper. A younger female grasped things rather quickly, and the hand of her mate, forcing him to join her in kneeling before Loki. One moved forward, as if to strike him, and found his throat neatly sliced by one of Nott’s blades.

Loki stepped through his blood to rest his hands upon the edge of the dais, meeting the horrified gaze of the queen.

Horrified, but perhaps not entirely surprised.

He smiled, “Why, mother, I should think even  _ my  _ words would be superfluous at the moment.”

At his side, Nott’s laughter rang through the hall as the warriors and nobles that they had already suborned - some greedy, some longing for glory, some merely tired of being Asgard’s footstool - poured into the throne room. 

He stepped back, waving a hand lazily, “We’ll have plenty of time to talk later. About all manner of things, I’m sure. I’ll visit you in your cell and you can explain to me why you and my departed sire thought it would be for the best to sacrifice me to the gods. Not that I blame you. Had you not I would doubtless have died here at worst anyway. Or at best would have grown up an ignorant savage knowing nothing but the failure of my ancestors and subsisting on wyrm blubber and tales of long past glory. Now be a good former queen and go quietly and I may allow my siblings to stay in their own rooms under guard rather than sending them to the dungeons with you.”

Fárbauti stared at him, perhaps thinking to speak. Or to attack. He could not say. Even after his many intimate moments with Nott he still had trouble reading the mask-like faces of the Jotunns. Then, wordlessly, she rose, removing her crown, holding it between her hands, then nodded her head and set it on her vacated throne before letting herself be led away by guards, her own having been quickly and brutally subdued by the greater force of Nott’s soldiers.

When she passed close to him her steps faltered and he wondered if she would speak or even look at him.

She did neither.

As he climbed up to the thrones, Loki ordered his thoughts and then sat, letting himself lounge, his newly enlarged, aching body enjoying the relief of sitting on the cold stone. 

Aere’s head ached.

She tried to wake up over and over. Each time she came close to surfacing from sleep cold, loving hands seemed to come from behind her, pulling her back into that dreamless place.

But now, finally, with the help of a less kind touch shaking her she woke.

Bleary, blinking, and with her head crying for mercy she pushed away the furs she was swaddled and then quickly dove back within, so cold was it. 

Everything hurt. 

Everything was dark.

Leaning over her were three Jotnar maidens, not so beautiful or frightening as the one who’d coveted her in Loki’s bed, but still more than terrifying enough in her confused state.

“Wake up, mortal. We have to prepare you.”

“Where am I?” Her lips cracked until they bled, her voice was hoarse.

They ignored her, one hoisted her up, careful to not touch her bare skin, whilst another thrust a small tray holding a too large, steaming up into her hands. Even as dizzy and disoriented as she was, centuries of training kept her from spilling even a drop. “Drink that, mortal. We don’t have much time.”

Something in that one’s tart tone reminded Aere of Diole. 

“I won’t dri-”

One of the others, disgusted, yanked Aere’s hair so her head fell back and she yelped in pain, and then poured the quickly cooling brew that stank of rotten herbs and sugar into her mouth, still managing to burn her throat and lips. 

Suddenly she was hot. Too hot. She shoved away the furs, confused and suddenly aware she was naked and surrounded.

They looked at her with the curiosity one might show a strange, helpless animal.

The tart one nodded, “There, now we can get you ready. The King-Who-Will-Be wants his pet ready to attend his coronation at dawn and we have much to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than normal for me, sorry, but it is meant to put things in place.


	10. All is Readiness

Aere was dazed and overwhelmed even as she did little more than stand or sit as things whirled about her or were done to her. Unused to be served, again and again, she would try to stand and move down from the platform they had her on, to take matters into her own hands. To be of use. 

Without effort they would lift her like a doll and put her back, scolding that she must stay still. 

They didn’t have time for foolishness. The coronation was so very soon, and it had been centuries upon millennia since the last. So many rituals to observe and long-forgotten relics to be unearthed. Such fuss.

Amongst the bustling giants Aere then was still and small and very, very tired. The last of which was strange, for she had clearly slept a long time, yet it seemed to have offered her no relief. At least she was no longer cold. Though she noticed that her skin had a fine layer of mist surrounding it. 

Raising her hand, she blew upon her fingertips, watching the steam dance like candle flame. It gave off a soft, golden glow against the black and blue of the darkened room, for the Jotnar seemed to dislike brightness and light. Here, only their eyes burned.

Their eyes, and Aere. Her whole body was surrounded by that warm seeming veil of light.

Dancing her fingers through the air Aere giggled at the sight, entranced and so, so tired. Still staring at the mist she tried to sink down to the fur-covered platform that was so comfortable beneath her feet, her eyes slowly closing. One of the maids grabbed her upper arm and held her still, like an overtaxed nurse with a difficult charge.

“What’s wrong with her?” She heard one of the females whisper to another.

“The Midgardian? Eh. You’re too young to remember, but when there were more of them at the palace the tea that they give them to keep them from dying of the cold - for they are such fragile, little things - it can sometimes make them like that until they grow accustomed to it. The King-Who-Will be had us give her a big dose, wants to make sure she doesn’t get her tiny feet chilled or something. Pitiful.”

“So she really is a Midgardian?” the first female asked. Then she leaned down, peering into Aere’s face.

Her eyes were very pretty and red as blood. Aere reached to touch the brow above them and she jerked back.

“I thought they were all de-”

The second female shushed her. “None of that. Now about your work.”

“I’m not a pet.” Aere managed to say, though her mouth felt like it was full of honey. Too full, and it was choking her and she lacked the will to fight for breath.

The second, older female, with a face as cragged as any mountain and a voice like bird’s wings, sighed, “No. That’s not the right word. Pet is just … you’re … Midgardians are  _ virðisløn  _ … it’s an old word we only use for you. Pet is just what the youngsters say.”

Aere only understood part of the words. But she nodded. This female was clearly the head server and therefore knew the most. 

“ _ Virðisløn _ ,” she thought she whispered, mangling the word and causing the Jotnar women to laugh at her.

They each repeated it to her in turn, as they fussed with her hair and bedecked her, yet her mimicry never improved and they howled louder each time she failed.

One of them started to do something to her hair, but one of the others stopped her. “No, the King-Who-Will-Be said to leave her head uncovered.”

Aere reached up and idly stroked her own hair, wondering why Loki wanted that, and then forgot as the fussing continued.

The crown of the kings of Jotunheim had been carved from the heart of the great glacier at the bottom of the Realm by the first member of the Clan  _ Julma _ to be king. Loki’s many times’ great grandfather.

Loki placed the black iron case it rested within on the heavy table that was the only piece of furnishing in the room, save a massive, austere bed with no drapes or cushions or coverings, worse than any prisoner on Asgard could expect. At the lightest touch, the hasp snapped open, and the lid slowly slid back to reveal its treasure. 

Even blacker than the case, the jagged coronet absorbed light, looking like an absence rather than an object. 

Legend said that if an imposter, or one not deserving of the throne, were to try and wear the crown it would melt to nothing under the heat of the lie. 

Loki had no fear. The Casket of Ancient Winters was nearly complete within him, most of the shards having pierced and shifted and reformed, both surrounding and transfixing his heart. Now he was the coldest thing in the Realm of Ice. That deeply uncomfortable looking piece of jewelry would be warm by comparison.

Temporarily settled into what should have already been his chambers, had he been raised on Jotunheim - the rooms designated for the Royal Heir - Loki had already dismissed the servants and lackeys who were trying to prepare him for what was ahead. Servants were the same everywhere, he thought to himself, and though the giants did not exactly flutter, they did hover and do a rather humorous kind of fawning. 

He found himself annoyed by their trying to advise him, to measure him, to serve him, and earn his favor before he took his throne. 

And he did not like them touching him. He would have prepared himself for the coronation, if it would not send the wrong message. When the time came he would steel himself to endure their hands. 

For now gladly alone, he strode naked through the rooms. Were he to be there more than a day he would have made any number of changes, yet since he would be in the Royal chambers in no time it was not worth his effort. Restless and pacing, his chest aching strangely which gave him yet more manic energy, Loki made himself stop to stare out of a curved bank of massive windows that overlooked the rest of the fortress.

Carved and tunneled over millennia within the  _ Trollheimr  _ mountains, the ancient and honorable seat of the kings of Jotunheim was the largest redoubt in the Nine Realms. Even with half of it blasted, leveled, and as just unbuilt by the forces of Asgard it could contain the entirety of that Realm’s own imposing palace. While it lacked the elegant beauty of the golden towers he had grown up in, there was grandeur here yet. 

Brutal, unyielding grandeur. 

Loki would be its match.

To his right peak after peak glowed with chill, silvery light from the window slits, watchtowers, and along surprisingly delicate-looking walkways strung between them. The fortress stretched for league upon league, though Loki knew that even beyond  _ that _ the mountain range continued for hundreds more, dotted with outposts not directly connected to the castle.

Putting one hand against the window, he passed the other over the icy glass, using his seidr to cause it to melt away so he could feel the luscious cold and look to his left to see what was mostly a flattened plain of slag and boulders left by the war with the Aesir.

Leaning his body out of the opening, a foot upon the sill and one upon the frame, Loki looked down. Down and down and down and still farther down at the spear-like rocks and impenetrable mists leading who knew how far into the Great Fjord hidden below them. The jagged crevasse where the scorned dead - cowards and enemies alike - were cast to sink even through the frozen water to fall into the Realm’s fiery heart. 

There was an allure to it that Loki could not deny.

The desire to let go and fall. Down and down and down and still farther down. Into that burning nothingness beyond the mists and rocks. To be obliterated. To be nothing.

Now at the moment when he was to have his kingdom, his throne, his queen, he knew the truth. Just as he had finally seen the truth of Asgard - that its gold had masked rot and lies, that its glory was merely loud trumpeting to hide the echoing emptiness - he now saw the truth of Jotunheimr. That it did not simply appear cold and joyless and broken.

It truly  _ was _ cold and joyless and broken.

Ugly. 

Everything, everywhere, was ugly.

There was a sharp pain in his chest, as two more pieces of the Cask found their way together. The click of icy glass reverberated through his blood. 

Snapping his head back, he sneered at his own weakness. What matter if it were ugly? Then let him be the King of Ugliness, the God of All that was Frightful. Restoring the glass with a wave, he went about the business of preparing for his coronation.

Loki had decided against dressing in Jotunn warrior garb such as he had chosen when presenting himself to his mother and her  _ court, _ if that drab assortment of nobles could be called such a thing. In the months before his departing Asgard Loki had commissioned a set of robes that he had claimed were for his brother’s forthcoming coronation. Looking at his designs the tailors had clearly worried, but his carefully curated reputation for cruelly violent caprice had done its work. They were more afraid of what he might do than of offending Thor by bedecking his younger brother in a style more lavish than himself.

What would Thor care, at any rate? He’d stroll into the great hall of Asgardia armed for war when he was crowned. Finery was not for him.

Loki looked at the garments. When he next strolled into the great hall of Asgardia he would also be armed for war. A war of conquest. 

Today however, to Jotunheimr he meant to send a different message.

With a snap of his fingers that echoed like cannon shot, Loki called back the servants he had dismissed before. They returned in a quiet huddle, and he spread his arms, nodding graciously for them to begin the bathing and anointing rituals required before he could take his throne. 

As one knelt to begin washing his feet, and another prepared the anoints, and a third poured the barely melted waters of the five frozen oceans into an alabaster bath. 

From the corner of his eye, he could see Nott peering at him through the partially open door between the rooms of the crown prince and those of his consort. 

His queen’s eyes were hot and avid. Even for a Jotunn. 

Loki knew that her original plotting had not been for his sake, but for her own. To create for herself a mate who would be besotted and enslaved to her, a figurehead through whom she would rule, but she had overshot her mark. 

He lowered himself into the bath, letting them pour the slushy, fragrant waters over his head eight times - once for each of the great clans he would now rule. When he stood, his magic caused the lingering wetness to roll off of his body and he exited the cistern as dry as he entered it, to the horrified shock of his attendants. The Frost Giants scorned the use of seidr by their warrior elite. 

They would learn better.

Looking to the door, he saw Nott’s lips were open just a touch. Loki looked into her eyes, his own mouth curling up at one corner, and she flushed purple and disappeared from sight.

The fistful of ice that his heart had become was too cold to even hold warmth for his soon-to-be queen. The Cask of Ancient Winters was an armor that no sentiment could pierce. Now, the magnetism of the power that now rested within him, along with a few erotic spells he’d learned in his time on Vanaheim, had left her the one besotted and enslaved. 

A haughty server, one who had grown old in service, her skin faded and her eyes dimmed, approached with a tray holding the five sacred oils. Ambergris from the sea whose scent was erotic. Conifer from the forest in the farthest south, that intoxicated. Sinerian  _ uqhuq _ , whose texture was unpleasant. Essence of golden root, which uplifted the spirit. And a last, scentless yet somehow foul oil, the source of which he did not desire to know.

Nott’s intelligence and cruel gift for scheming, along with her great beauty and important family would make her an excellent queen. Someday he would even have get by her. Far in the future, when his empire was secure and he would have the time to attend to their rearing himself. No child of his would be raised by a jealous and ambitious queen who had already assisted in usurping one throne. He would send them forth to prove their mettle in his various Realms. 

One of the servants was braiding his hair with gems and beads made of precious metals. Loki sighed. He rather wished he’d been able to kill his father in combat and had taken the throne that way. There was much less ceremony involved. He would have just had to enter the throne room still drenched in royal blood and dragging Laufey’s massive head behind him and he’d have been king.

And no one would dare touch his hair.

Of the young he had with Nott, he bravest would go to Niflheim. The most patient to Nidavellir. The cleverest to Alfheim. The one most annoying to Mustpelheim, needless to say. 

The most cunning to Svarltalfheim.

And, the children he would have with Aere would rule Asgard and Vanaheim. The proud gods would kiss the cold and dirty boots of the descendants of those whose worlds they had destroyed or tried to destroy, the progeny of ones who had been little more than war-prizes to them.

The pieces of the Casket shifted within him, clicking loud enough to hear, abrading the tough flesh of his heart, throbbing like a wound. Clutching at his chest, his teeth ground, and icy sweat poured from his body. 

The servants backed away from him, terrified and appalled by the weakness he was showing. For a few, terrible moments he writhed silently on the ground, pounding a fist to his ribs to make the pain stop.

One of the servants, that oldest and most knowing one, slitted her eyes to the side, and seeing where he had laid his daggers when he had stripped, lunged for it and then for him, her arm raised, her eyes burning, “For my Queen!” she hissed.

The Casket clicked again.

Loki caught her wrist as he stood, cold and perfect, easily taking the dagger from her to slit her traitor’s throat, while tossing her away as to not besmirch himself with her blood. He did not look at the other two as he licked the blade clean, “Will you join her, or will you serve?” 

He was done with being touched and fussed over. His magic caused his robes to drape themselves about him, his cloak to hang itself from his shoulders, his boots to buckle themselves up to his thighs.

The two Jotunns looked at each other and then knelt, their heads low enough their hair brushed the ground, and he trod upon it as he left the chambers of the crown prince, never to return. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> virðisløn - prize in Faroese.


	11. King Loki and His Consorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki becomes the king of Jotunheim

Aere was still a bit dazed, though only as much as if she’d drunk a glass too much of wine, when the giants finally declared her as ready as they could make her. One of them, a younger one she could tell because her face was almost smooth with the caste and aging marks little more than lines, turned her this way and that so all could see. 

“There, you look just like a perfect little war-prize.”

One of the elders snorted, “As if you would know, child.”

Aere considered her reflection, which was very small in the vast, silver framed mirror. The servants’ chatter whilst they had readied her was starting to make sense. Her hair had been wound about with strange beads that the Jotnar woman in charge of preparing her said were from Midgard, creating a kind of complex, knotted crown about her head that no one could unafix but the King-Who-Would-Be. They had put powder on her to make her skin purest white, like snow that was never touched. Had she been darker-skinned they would have used other pigments to make it blue-black, which was apparently the color of the most beautiful and valued  _ Virðisløn _ that were taken from Midgard in the past. 

Greasy, red oil had been smeared on her lips and, she recalled, on her nipples which were hidden under a chemise of spider silk dyed a green that was nearly black as well as an apron style overdress of pale, golden brown wool, held in place with large, copper pins that were made of metal that swirled and turned upon themselves in knots as complex as her hair. 

The top of her head hurt terribly from how tight those knots were as they pulled her roots, and how heavy the beads were as well. Slowly she lifted a hand to scratch under them, watching herself in the mirror, each moment feeling like it was delayed from what she was seeing. The young female pushed her hand away, “None of that,  _ flekkr _ .”

“Don’t ever let the King-Who-Will-Be hear you say that, fool.”

With a t’sking noise, the young female made a flicking gesture, “We’ll see how long she lasts. The Queen-Who-Will-Be will deal with her soon enough. Nott is the jealous sort. Once they are done having their play, of course.”

“Should a  _ Virðisløn _ not have…?” One of them said, raising a hand to her throat with a cagey look. Aere did not know any of their names yet. She wondered if she would live long enough to do so.

“Yes, but the King-Who-Will-Be will put it on her himself. Now bring her, the ceremony starts soon.” 

Again, as if she were naught but a toy, one of them lifted her down from the high stool and they chivvied her along towards the great double doors where the two largest Jotunns she had ever seen yet stood, dressed in full battle gear and holding halberds, waited for her. “They are your guards, go with them.”

Why would she need guards? 

Aere barely came up to the elbow of either of them and they did not deign to look at her as they escorted her through the quiet fortress. Here and there piles of rubble and broken walls let her see into massive, abandoned rooms or out into a vast, black courtyard where little more was evident than snow swirling on the winds that howled through those crumbled places and pushed her, nearly knocking her from her feet.

Each time one of the guards, still looking ahead, would grab her by the back of her gown to set her upright again.

The floor was pleasantly cool beneath her feet and Aere realized they hadn’t given her shoes or even stockings. If the floor felt cool it must be bone achingly cold, she reasoned. The halls were dark as well, the Jotnar being able to see well in the dim light. As she grew more alert, she tried to note things like where they turned, but the great redoubt was a maze, built to confound invaders not welcome guests.

The further they walked down and inwards there was less damage, and finally a few other Frost Giants - guards and servants clearly - were rushing here and there about someone’s business.

They stopped before a set of doors even larger than those on the chamber she had been kept in previously. From behind them she could hear someone speaking loudly, as if calling out, and the low susurrus of a crowd. There had been enough times she had attended Queen Frigga when courts held on Vanaheim that Aere immediately recognized that was what was happening within.

Loki’s voice was resonant and distinct even through the iron doors. 

When they swung open, she saw masses of Jotnar standing in an enormous room, as large as the throne room upon Asgardia. Unlike the Vanir and Asgardians they were not in orderly rows, but in distinct masses. Clusters of families or, based on the like colors of their kilts and armored legs and arms, warbands, had staked out places in the hall with no concerns other than their own, so those servants commanded to fetch or carry struggled to do so in any quick fashion and earned buffets and kicks for it. Only the middle aisle remained clear, and that mainly due to a large number of Jotunns dressed in warrior garb with green kilts and heavy, gold arm-rings that looked like those the All-Father gave out to the heroes of the Aesir, encircling their massive biceps. 

Even here, there was evidence of the fate of the defeated Realm. The black salt floor that had been carved with elaborate sigils at one point was scuffed and worn down, more grey in places than sable. 

The lights were so low and all of the Jotnar were so large that for a moment Aere felt like she was in a strange forest at night. 

A forest full of hungry wolves.

At the head of the hall, even though it was so long and vast, she could see the raised stage where Loki stood. Somehow, seidr no doubt, his voice could be heard booming through the air - speaking of a return to glory and greater glory still and all of the other nonsense that rulers spouted as if it meant something - and he could additionally be seen with perfect clarity from even that distance. 

Every seam in the gold and black robes he wore, Asgardian in style, hanging open over the Jotnar warrior’s kilt was perfectly visible. 

Every inch of cerulean skin covering lean muscle and long limbs, longer even than what she had always thought was normal for him. He was taller, somehow...

Each, faintly luminous, perfect caste mark, was so apparent that she could almost feel them under her fingertips.

Each strand of long hair, black as the void, black as his heart had turned. A heart she no longer understood.

In his hands Loki held a crown, glittering and perfect as if it had been carved from one great, dark diamond. It seemed that upon seeing her enter the hall, he raised his hands and staring past the crowd to stare into her eyes alone, Loki fitted it over the large, curving horns that already crowned his handsome head. 

Sliding over those horns, there was a sound from the crown, like ice rubbing on ice and then a slight click. 

As one, the milling, chaotic crowd of Jotnar fell one knee in perfect silence.

“My Lady Nott, come forth,” Loki said, gesturing to his right. There was a rumble in the kneeling crowd, as if this were something outside of protocol or tradition, whatever they called the need to do things the same way over and over again for fear of change.

From the side of the stage a Jotunn female - no, _ that _ Jotunn female, the one who had been at Aere’s side when she’d woken who knew how many days ago now - gorgeous, strong, and proud, walked forth entirely naked to kneel at Loki’s feet. 

Aere, whose mind was starting to move at it’s more typical pace, wondered if she had an allergy to clothing, so often did she seem to go without it.

From another, older female wearing enough heavy jewelry to show her as some kind of noblewoman, Loki took what looked like a bundle of shimmering cloth. 

Holding it up to show his court, he then draped it over the kneeling woman’s head, where it fell around her like a long tabard and when he took her hand so she stood and he wrapped a girdle of gold dripping with pearls and coral about her waist, intoning in his most pompous, princely voice, the one Aere hated the most and yet also craved, “Today you kneel before your king, who from this day forth until the ending of all things, shall be the only one you shall ever thus abase yourself before. And now rise, as my queen.”

Aere did not know this Loki, did not love him, could not love him, and yet it felt as if her heart turned to frozen rock at his words. 

“My heart is a frozen rock…” she whispered to herself, confused. Why was something about that familiar? “My heart is a frozen….”

“Silence,” one of the guards hissed.

The king kissed his queen. Not a decorous, polite kiss. Not a kiss that functioned as a symbol or a promise. It was a kiss of passion, of heat so intense that it burned through the air of this icy place. A kiss mimicking fornication, promising heirs to the throne would soon be produced, that the Realm would be safe. 

The amassed crowd surged to their feet, stomping, and cheering. From the taciturn Jotnar, it was a shock. 

When Loki turned Nott to face the crowd, the guards now chivvied Aere to the side of the hall, along a small opening the crowd had left there. All of the while Loki was speaking but she could no longer hear him over the pounding in her ears and the whispering of the Jotnar as she slunk amongst them and they smirked and scowled and frankly stared down at her.

Though none dared touch her it was clear that several longed to, their hands flexing and tightening into fists. Her guards were larger than any of them, for which Aere was thankful. Her head ached now, and she was starting to grow cold.

When they reached the front of the room, the massive guards took her arms and lifted her onto the left side of the dais. It hurt. 

Her legs hurt.

Her feet hurt. 

“Aere of Fallen Midgard, come forth,” Loki said, gestured for her though he did not turn towards her. He looked rather impatient.

She could swear he was even colder than the rest of the room, that she could feel the burning iciness of him moving like tendrils through the already frigid air so they could wrap about her.

She didn’t understand anything. 

The same servant stood behind Loki again, now holding something that might have been a golden circlet, but was too small around…

When she didn’t move, Loki raised an eyebrow and then moved his fingers, beckoning her, but it was more the surprised scowl on the face of his queen that made her walk across the wide dais, her eyes locked to that circlet, her heart now pounding harder as she realized what it was. 

There was nowhere she could run. 

But she would not kneel.

  
  


“Take it off! Take it off!” The length of the chain that was hasped to the bed did not allow Aere to quite reach Loki when he finally joined her in the chamber he’d had arranged for, hers adjoining his own chambers.

It had once been a closet, he imagined, built as it was on so much a smaller scale than any of the other rooms in the near-derelict fortress that was his patrimony. 

He was weary and longed only to climb into her bed, fucking her until they both could no longer move, and then to sleep through the next day while the grotesque feasts of what the Jotunns considered to be food went on without him, overseen by his queen.

Once finished with his crowning of himself and the bedecking of his queen and his chief leman, Loki had already overseen the ceremonial executions of his mother’s chief counsellors and remaining loyalists, as well as those of a number of other prisoners. After the beheadings, their blood was poured over the floor under his throne where it froze as hard as stone. Following that he had joined the first of the disgusting banquets long enough to offer a number of toasts and give gifts. 

Each was carefully calibrated to create both obligation in the receiver and jealousy in another, thus starting to cement loyalty to himself and division between the most powerful and ambitious of the warbands and clans.

All of the while he’d had to placate Nott, whose displeasure at his naming Aere an official concubine was as predictable as it was tedious. He had finally excused them to an ante-chamber where he placated her with his cock sufficiently to allow him to explain to her that having the last Midgardian as his leman suited a purpose that would leave them with the greatest empire in the history of the Nine without needing to go to war constantly to defend their claims. 

Then she was kittenish and coy, beseeching him to share his secrets and plans with her. Thinking to know how to ingratiate herself with him still.

It disgusted him to recall how taken with her he had been once. How her craftful appetite for power had compelled and entranced him, like a spell... Now that he saw the limits of her dreams he was disinterested in her thoughts. 

Though her body still pleased him and her need to scheme had its uses to him yet.

From under the collar, blood seeped, rolling down Aere’s neck, into the bodice of her dress, staining the wool and silk. Her throat was raw, with open wounds from where she had worn at herself like an animal with a paw in a snare. Had she still been mortal it could have been a deadly wound, from either blood loss or infections, but for one who’d eaten of the apples of Asgard it was merely painful and ugly. 

That she had made such a terrible fuss when he’d placed the Collar of Claiming on her, forcing him to restrain her, was actually a good thing. A bit of theatre for the barbarians he would now be using as the backbone of his Empire to come.

The circles beneath Aere’s eyes were dark as dirt, and her nails were broken from where she had pulled and pulled on the chain. Around her were other broken things - fragments of a decorative sculpture, a bit of stone frame from a mirror, for wood was rare and precious on Jotunheim, other things he could no longer recognize. All rare items from other Realms, raided from about the redoubt and put in this room to make it less alien for her. Warmer.

There was even a fire in the small oven he’d had brought to her room so they wouldn’t have to constantly douse her with the tincture needed to keep her warm and … compliant. Story said that taking it for too long or too often could permanently alter the mind of the taker.

All of the broken things had her blood upon them. She’d been using them to try and pry the chain from the bed and the collar from her neck.

Loki hated that she was marred. How distasteful that was. 

Once the passion of anger she showed when he first entered ended she stood swaying slightly, wary but worn.

“Of course,” he said, walking slowly towards her, like he might approach a hart he had stalked long through the woods and was now tiring. “It is only a formality, a symbol, meant to be worn in public so that you will not be offered insult or be … touched … it shows you are mine.” 

He could remove the collar from anywhere, but he did not wish her to know that yet. Moreover, he wished her to believe that he had to be close to her now. So she would welcome him for one reason at least. Though before Jotunheimr’s long night was over he was determined she would welcome him completely.

Though she did not back away from him this time, Loki could tell she wanted to. Instead, tense and panting slightly in exhaustion and fear, she stood very still. “You need not fear me, Aere. You are the rarest prize I have, more so than this ugly crown, or any of the other … artifacts on this mausoleum of a planet. Unique. Precious.”

When he was an arm’s length from Aere he reached out and gently stroked a finger against the smooth, seamless gold of the collar which fell to the ground with a mighty clunk. “Oh, what you’ve done to yourself,  _ fjársjóður _ ?” 

The sight of Aere’s flesh so mangled, looking like meat, almost upset him. 

There was a shadow of a … Loki could not call it a feeling, for he did not recall the experience of most of them. He could recall how he behaved, how others responded. But not the things themselves.

When he had sat upon Queen Frigga’s lap and she had told him stories, while Prince Thor ran back and forth waving a toy spear, declaring himself the new All-Father and Loki his general he had been very small, and had covered his face with her cloak and laughed. 

Who knew what could be humorous about such things?

Clearly it was scorn. For who did not laugh at those they scorned?

When he had stood at King Odin’s side, receiving his first arm-ring and had then given his first boast before the mead-hall, while his majesty nodded and smiled there had been a feeling of expansion within his chest. As if he had taken his first full, unobstructed breath in who knew how long. 

He had been warm and had fought to not smile.

Surely that was pride. Pride was good. Pride was important. That he understood.

When he had laid in the snow on the verge of the Bard River on Vanaheim, with Aere against his side, her head upon his shoulder and her hand upon his chest as they watched the planet Skírnir move close to the star cluster known as The Seven Maidens. She had whispered in his ear that it looked as if they were embracing.

That feeling, where all of his body was awake yet lax, where he had to pull her closer so her face nestled against his neck, and where he felt that he need never move again if she were content to stay as they were…

That feeling…

Loki almost thought he could reach out and touch it, but it had long since burned away and left not even ash.

“How could you do this to me?” Aere snarled, for she was fierce, even if as a servant she had hidden that ferocity. She touched her neck and then winced.

That wince and the tears from the pain worked at the place within him where that burned away feeling had lived before. A phantom limb that hurt even when the amputee knew that it had been severed and thrown away to rot. 

For a moment he considered lying, knowing he could mimic the words, the tones, the motions that would offer Aere some comfort. That he could persuade her to his side with cleverness and a kind of burlesque of affection because he knew her and how badly she wanted someone to love, who would love her in return.

But he was no longer the God of Lies, and she was no longer his beloved.

He was the King of Jotunheim, and she was his property.

Reaching out, he wrapped a large, black taloned hand around her neck, pulling her close and lifting slightly so she stood on her toes which still meant he needed to lean down to whisper in her ear, “For the same reason everyone has done all that they have done to you and yours and those like you, because I could.”

  
  



	12. Everywhere is a Prison if You Do Not Have a Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki tells Aere the truth.

  
  


_ “We were once everywhere, girl. Elves traveled forgotten roads between the Realms before those Aesir warmongers even dreamt something like their Bifrost was possible. We had brothers and sisters amongst the Vanir, amongst the Dwarves, even amongst your mortal kin, though we hid from them most of the time.” _

Aere fought Loki’s grip upon her throat as hard as she had fought the collar he’d used to make a thing of her,a thing that could be owned.

“When I put that back upon this tender neck it will never come off again. Tis for your own good, Aere, know that. Wearing it you will be safe from even the crudest or most cunning within these walls. Where walls there still are,” he sighed “in this wreckage.”

With no effort on his part, Loki pushed, manuvering in the cozy kennel he had made for her, so her back was to the wall and he could keep her at an easy arm's length. No amount of clawing could make him release her, no amount of kicking moved him, no wild, furious punches could reach his now alien, amused face. 

Though tightly bound she had been to Queen Frigga’s household, Aere had believed, had  _ known _ , that she could walk away. Maybe to fail and be lost, maybe to crawl back in defeat, but even on her darkest night knowing that she had that freedom, however faint the crack in the doorway to it was, had been a comfort when no other comfort could be had. 

“You are going to wear yourself out. If it makes you feel better, rage and have your tantrum. Once I wore myself out on such useless, self-inflicted misery as well. One’s weird cannot be fought against, Aere. I know better than most.”

He was humoring her. There was even a pleasant smile on his lips, though none in his burning eyes.

The cold of his hand against the ragged skin of her throat first burned and then numbed. Sweat soaked her hair. Already heavy with beads and braids that pulled hard on her scalp, it now hurt. While she fruitlessly struggled, Loki cocked his head, smiling, “This is quite pretty for being Jotun styled. But I prefer it down.” 

Like snakes leaving a nest her hair writhed, unspooling from its elaborate structure, a rain of beads falling over her, striking the stony floor with a sound of hail. 

She fought and fought and it made no difference. A mere mortal would be overmatched by a god or a giant, let alone both.

Finally, Aere slumped, held upright by only that same, implacable grip. “Why are you including me in your madness?” Her voice was raspy with discomfort. Gods, but there was not a piece of her that did not hurt, without or within.

“Madness? Is it madness? It is not madness to claim what is mine own. Jotunheim. Nott. You.” There was tenseness and a rising fury now to Loki’s voice, as he spoke through gritted teeth. Tears of rage froze to his face, “Everything that should be mine will be!”

Before Aere had time to fear him, he gave her that joyless smile again as his mood turned to a mockery of affection.

He stepped closer, still holding her throat but not so tightly and now he stroked her hair. The tenderness of the gesture choked her more than his grip or even the collar had. “Was standing in Thor’s shadow so terrible you had to use your power to- to  _ transmogrify _ yourself into one of the Jotnar and steal the throne from a people who have already lost so much to the Aesir?”

For a moment he did not move and then finally let her go, stepping back. The astonished expression was the first familiar, the first truly Loki, thing she had recognised from him since she had woken up in this cold place. Then, he pointed at her face, an icy fingertip brushing her nose, and laughed, “Oh! Oh, you do not know? Of course you do not. In my haste to take my rightful place I had quite forgotten.”

Spreading his hands to either side, showing off height and strength, pale blue skin etched with caste markings, black nails to match the adorning, arched horns that bracketed his crown, “This is the secret that kept me from ever finding true favor with Odin. This is the truth meant no matter how hard I strove, how much craft I studied, skill I gained, wisdom I earned, or how much of an oafish, blundering, arrogant, child-man my bro- that Thor showed himself to be, I would never be worthy to sit upon the throne of Asgard!”

Starting calm, amused even, the words fell from him - eloquent as ever. Spilling louder and faster until spittle like snow frothed from his lips and he roared now, even madder seeming than before.

“Taken from this broken Realm like a war prize by Odin! Trained to serve as his son’s mind, for he surely has  _ none  _ of his own, by the Queen! To have nothing for mine own, save gratitude and …” 

The last words were quieter, slower, and filled with poison. 

“I’m like you, Aere. Save that I have a home to return to. Such as it is.” He looked about with disgust. “But better this barbaric ruin than a wasteland. Even Jotunheim is a garden compared to poor Midgard.”

“What? What about Midgard?”

Turning from her, Loki crossed the room to where some refreshments waited near the fireplace and poured two goblets of wine, “This was made on Midgard. The last of a dozen barrels saved and stored in the permafrost by Jotunns who fled the devastation left behind by my fathers’ spiteful battle over your precious jewel of a Realm. Just as you are the last true Midgardian alive of those few dozen unfortunate creatures saved. In your case, given long life by the queen whose pet elf felt bad for you and wanted a toy that she could dress up and teach her servile little lessons to.” 

There was a roaring sound in her ears. 

Now his voice was playful, “And you learned them so well, even while keeping that silly dream of yours that you would shake off the shackles Diole had put on your will and run off home to Midgard. Lost, dead Midgard.”

Loki was the finest liar Aere had ever known. His silvertongue could convince birds to swim and fish to build nests. 

Shrugging when she would not take the glass he offered, Loki righted a chair she had knocked over and sat, sipping. “Made with fruit and spices from Midgard but yeast from Jotunheim. Quite sophisticated, considering the sources. When we have children, they shall be like this wine. When I have ripped the power of the All-Father from Odin Borson I will use it and the enslaved Aesir to make Midgard over again, for those children to rule.”

If Loki spoke the truth the silver turned into a blade.

“I wonder if the reason I was drawn to you from the start was that I recognized a kindred nature in you? Both of us were naught but pretty baubles taken at the end of the great war?” There was something like concern in his voice then, “Oh, are you crying?”

Was she? She touched her face. It was wet. 

His tongue was so sharp she hadn’t even felt its words enter her heart and cut.

“How long have you known?” 

“Since we were children.” He said it as if telling her that he preferred fish to lamb.

Oh. 

Aere’s mind was stuffed to bursting with noise now. Some of it voices, some of it music, much of it roaring.

  
  
  


The goblet he had filled for her was cold, though the gold was thick enough that the wine had not frozen from his touch for which Loki was grateful, though he could tell Aere tasted nothing when she drank. 

“You should eat as well.”

She put a piece of flatbread in her mouth, chewing, but could not make herself swallow. 

Loki kept talking, biting deeply into a pear as he did. One of the astonishing, or interesting, things he’d discovered about Jotunheim were the deep places - warmed by hot springs and volcanoes that were tamed by the shamen and shamankas who were the only creatures who could use seidr amongst the Jotnar without being scorned for it - where they were able to grow some foodstuffs. The richness of that scant soil made for delicious fruits but was not enough to feed any but the elite. 

Another use for the excessive powers of Asgard. 

“I had planned to finally have you tonight. To take you in this warm little room, to settle this thing between us after so much waiting and make you very happy. I would not breed you yet. Not until I am certain that I could do so without our young harming you. You are far too precious and rare a little treasure to risk. When I do breed you it will be perfectly safe and not until after I fill Nott’s belly a few times so she’ll feel safe.”

She nodded, clearly not making out the words, just hearing his voice. Staring at nothing as she chewed and chewed. 

“Aere?” 

Loki turned to look at her and for a moment the flicker of the fire that did little to warm her ghastly white features he thought he saw a glint of something in her eye. A flick of them to the side, or perhaps a tear, but no.

The rate of her chew was steady, but she did not swallow nor seem aware that she was eating. There was an emptiness to her eyes that was not what he had seen when she had been under the influence of the drugs and seidr he had used to keep her safe and asleep whilst they had traveled and when they were first arrived in his broken, cold Realm. 

It was the emptiness of knowing the truth behind the lies you were told about yourself, about the world, about there being good and bad and anything other than chaos and void beneath that thin veneer of lies that everyone danced across and called it real. The truth scoured you clean and left you must comfortably hollow.

Good.

As much as he could be pleased, Loki was pleased by this. He would never again try to explain himself to another, to be known by anyone, as he was now. 

Aere alone had understood him, of all creatures in his life she was perhaps the only one he understood with any depth as well. His enlightenment had severed that, and whilst he could live within himself well enough it would make things easier to again have that likeness of mind with her. To know that when he needed council, or simply receptive ear for his thoughts he would have it without any potential risk to himself.

After all, she would belong to him alone now. The Frost Giants would covet his delicate pet, but would see her as no more than that. Allyless, Aere would need him even more than she always had. That pleased him as well.

Reaching out to touch her neck again, Loki let a brush of seidr soothe the wounds she had given herself. He had never been a healer of any skill, but the rough handling he’d received from Prince Thor, and the reckless life he’d enjoyed upon his own, had taught him the value of having a magical anodyne ready. 

There was a small frown line between her eyes, as if she were remembering something, when abruptly her eyes were focused, narrowing. “Don’t grab me. It hurts.”

“Everything hurts, if you endure it long enough. But this is to help. Sit still.”

Looking down at his hand, Aere asked, “Won’t it kill me for you to- for us to-. Won’t the cold from you fucking me kill me?” she finally asked. “My neck is already frozen off of me.” Then she frowned and slid her hand under his to touch her throat. “That’s better.”

The touch of her hand. So very warm and firm and familiar that it pained him.

She sounded like her old self. Snippy, practical, blunt. 

Unafraid.

He let himself smile, pointing to the collar he’d taken off of her before where it lay discarded on the floor. “Not if you wear this.” That there were several other ways that he could bed her without fear of harm was something she did not need to know.

For a moment they were silent. Then Aere picked up the goblet, took a deep drink, and then tore off another piece of bread with her sharp little teeth, eating the entire thing in quick bites before taking up the rest of his pear to finish as well. Amused at her sudden hunger, and at the hunger that he felt watching her devour the meal, Loki lounged back on the divan and watched, sipping at his own wine.

Done, she wiped her hands on the priceless undergown of her ceremonial dress and walked briskly to the collar. Loki frowned, wondering if Aere was going to do something impulsive. Throw it into the fire, perhaps. Instead, she lifted it to her throat and replaced it there.

The click of the magical lock that only he could open reverberated through the room. Through his icy blood. Through his throbbing cock. 

How many years had it been since he’d been astonished? 

When she climbed into his lap and pressed her mouth against his Loki tensed for a moment. What was she up to? Then he smelled her, ripe and ready for him, and it was all he could do to keep from shredding the dress from her and rutting like a beast.

Aere refused to think about anything. She let her body choose while she still had a choice to make. 

She did not know this Loki, and whilst she trusted his vanity would refuse to believe he would not be able to seduce her, she did not trust this beautiful stranger not to lose patience and take what he wanted, will she or nil she. 

Despite the colour of his pretty skin or the cruelty of every word and action, he still looked like the one who she loved. Who from this moment on Aere would consider to be dead. Then she could mourn him and all of her own little dreams together, then put them in a casket and never open it again.

With the collar on he was warm and when she closed her eyes and pressed herself against him she burned.

For the long years she had wanted and waited for Loki Aere had been alone. He had learned about love, or sex, in the arms of others. 

Aere had studied herself. In the vast library in the Queen’s house, especially the books bound in red leather and set high up on a shelf where curiosity had driven her and Loki to climb and take them down when they were still rather young. They had both blushed brighter than those colorful spines and had not been able to meet each other’s eye for days afterward. 

His mouth was still sweet, despite all of the bitter unkindness that had come from it. Sweet and splendid and rough. In another life, she might have longed for tenderness from him, for her first time. Not now. A long, clever tongue slid between her lips and teeth and aggressively explored. 

That tongue, and the firm, thin lips, and the small bites he gave her when she tried to slow him, made it easy to forget everything except the tightness of her nipples and the sudden, prickling flood as her sex softened and already started to tremble. 

As he took her mouth, long-fingered hands wrapped around her hips and shifted her, so now her knees bracketed his lean hips and the thick swell of his cock barely held in check by his kilt rubbed against the achy cradle of her cunt. Loki had always been bigger and stronger than she was and now even more so. There was something about his easy handling of her, even as he growled when she pulled her mouth away. 

Raising herself on her knees, she wrapped her arms about his head. With a yank he pulled apart the silk of her dress and lapped at one of her nipples, desperate and fast, while he pinched the other and twisted. She wanted that cruelty. 

When his free hand found its way beneath her skirts to stroke hard between the lips of her labia, Loki chuckled, “You are dripping, my darling warprize. When we would tease each other and kiss, did you ever think you would have a Jotunn fucking you? Stealing you away and fucking you like a broodmare? Because I will tonight. Tonight and every night.”

His words meant nothing. His hand was everything. Two long fingers sunk into her, “Ride my hand, my prize. Ride my hand until you come on it and your wet rolls down my arm.”

Then he returned to worrying her breast. 

His thumb tapped on the nub of her clit in time to the hard strokes of those fingers and Aere rode. She ground against that deep, invasive touch. Not afraid of his talons. Not afraid of his fangs. Not afraid of anything but not completing. Of thinking and then caring and then not coming. 

Aere pulled his hair, and rubbed the side of her face against one of those tall, magnificent horns, needy and unheeding because everything felt good. 

Loki’s hips jerked beneath her. “Be careful how you play with me,” he growled. 

His horns were sensitive, she noted in a small part of her mind that held onto itself. That was good to know.

Helpless and close, she barely heard him. Instead, her open mouth caressed the ridged length of the horn, now holding both of them.

With a sound of fury and lust, Loki pulled his hand free, pushing his kilt aside, and jerked her hips down to impale her on his cock, hard as one of those horns, perfectly curved, Aere wailed as it filled her too full, too long and her cunt welcomed it. If she could not be with someone who she loved and who loved her in turn for her first time all that mattered to her was sensation.

For a moment Loki froze. “Have I-, did I-, are you hurt?”

There was real care in that voice. It was  _ her _ Loki’s voice.

She had no time to speak to ghosts.

Grabbing those horns, she worked against him, “No. You couldn’t if you tried.” Then she hissed into his ear, “Your Majesty.”

He carried her to the ground, to the soft fur upon the floor, himself again, “But I can make you cry.”

The eloquence of his hips as he tilted her so there were places within her that she had read about but not found even with a great deal of eager exploration proved his point. The peak that she wanted ebbed with teasing and then she flew towards it at the moment he required, when she was sobbing with need of release. 

“By the Nine, that sweet hole of yours is as hot as a forge. You burn me. Let that revenge comfort you. To be a Jotunn obsessed with fire…”

Aere would not listen.

The vastness of the orgasm sweeping through her, as it pushed aside grief and confusion and heartache. There was only pleasure. Pleasure Loki insisted upon. 

This Loki, like her dead love, demanded excellence from himself in all things. And so when finally he allowed himself that same pleasure he had wrung and wracked from her body, every drop. Falling beside her, he clutched her to him tightly.

Aere looked at the fire, remembering.

Loki was a trained warrior, a Jotnar, and an Asgardian. Long nights of training, as well as his study of magic, and the speed at which his clever mind worked meant sleep was often a stranger to him.

Aere was a servant. The student of the chiefest servant to a Queen, who then took that place herself. She was also newly heartbroken and vengeful.

She rode him all night. She teased his horns and his cock, she suckled and fondled and scratched and bit and rode him into the ground because her anger and her years of serving together gave her a will that would make the heavens shudder. 

Just before dawn the door to the King’s chambers opened, and his Midgardian slipped out. The guards that stood there frowned down at her. With her most officious and confident tone, learned at Diole’s hip, she asked, “Where is the bathing chamber?” She pretended to shiver a bit and clutch the long cape she wore more closely around her.

They stared at each other, “The king has his own-”

“Do you think the King of Jotunheimr shares his private bathing chamber with his pet? He told me to be clean when he woke, so if you want me to tell him you kept me…?”

The taller of the two - though in truth they were both so vastly tall it was hard for Aere to tell the difference - looked at her collar and nodded, “There are three.” He gave her directions to all of them, should one be in use by early waking slaves and guards.

Nodding with the imperiousness that only one who had served royalty could have, Aere strode purposefully towards the first bathing chamber. With enough sense of purpose, one could go anywhere without question.

When she was out of sight of them she allowed her self to shudder and creep for a bit. Her body was worn out. Sore everywhere. Painful in others. She felt rank, having only a little water and a little time to clean herself. 

She would have offered a prayer if she had still believed in the gods, that she remembered Diole’s stories as well as she thought she did.

The first bathing chamber was empty. Made of smooth black stone with silver veins, because it was on the same floor as the King’s rooms it was grand and beautiful, if worn and frankly in need of a good cleaning, offending Aere’s sensibilities. She’d give the rough edge of her tongue to whoever considered this to be clean. 

The tub was large enough to wash a herd of cows.

It was not what she looked for, and she was thankful the water was clearly icy cold. A tub of hot water to ease herself into would have made her cry with longing at that point.

By the time she reached the second chamber, she was running, and wincing with each painful jostle, through the now filling halls of the redoubt. Loki would wake soon and find her gone. Her feet were sore from the rough ground beneath the thin slippers which were the only type of shoes she had found in her rooms. To make it harder for her to do what she was doing, no doubt.

The second room was of dark red granite, also polished, no smaller but less grand than the first. It was also filled with naked Jotnar of both sexes, cleaning themselves in slushy, half-frozen water. They were clearly slaves and servants, based on their markings, and while a few looked at her and whispered to their fellows, curious, they were all too hurried and well disciplined to question what the King’s pet was doing in their midst. Quickly they decided it was in their best interest to not know and ignored her.

For a moment Aere feared what she sought was not there. She prowled the edge of the room, walking around dressing and undressing giants, until finally, on the farthest point of the room where there was a small - by Jotunheim standards - alcove hung with a mirror. 

It looked to be nothing special, polished metal rather than silvered glass, scratched heavily so almost no reflection could be seen, it was bolted to the wall with, oddly, copper spikes, copper being uncommon in the Giant’s Realm. Other than that detail it was just what one might expect in a facility for servants. 

It needed dusting.

Aere t’sked to herself, preferring to concentrate on minutiae.

“Diole, I hope your stories were not just stories,” she said to herself, reaching up to one of the screws. 

The copper bolt came loose easily enough. 

Closing her eyes, to remember, Aere placed the point of the screw to the mirror and began to scratch lightly. Circles within circles. One for each Realm, and then within each of those smaller and smaller circles, for the worlds. 

The metal rippled, like the slushy water in the vast tub. 

More circles.

The Elven gate now fluctuated like a lake in a storm. 

She remembered Diole laughing about how her people had placed their doorways. Some were hidden away, some were hidden in plain sight, some were never hidden at all, but none were ever found except by those who already knew where they were. 

Just a little touch of seidr, to make them seem unimportant.

A final circle.

The door opened. 

Aere stepped through, leaving behind only a scratched mirror and a copper bolt that pinged against the ground and rolled away.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	13. Going

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aere walks and Loki plots.

Loki refused to open his eyes. The warmth of Aere’s bed should have been painful to him but it was not. 

He had not slept so well in so very long.

Perhaps he had never slept so well since he was too young to remember the concept of sleep. When one is very little, sleep is simply something that happens naturally, when needed, or does not. Then you reach a certain age and sleep becomes a thing that you must think about. 

Then, when still quite young if no longer an infant, Loki’s mind had been too busy for sleep, _ he  _ had been too busy for sleep. 

After all, what better time for discovery and mischief than when everyone who might stop you thinks you are safely tucked into your princely bed?

Then, later still, the pains and changes in his body would make even lying still for any length of time painful if not purely impossible. Now he understood that the conjoined juvenescence he had been going through - Aesir and Jotnar both - had most like been tearing his body to pieces and parts, both working their will upon him and leaving him with nothing like peace. 

Even Frigga’s magicks and Odin’s vast, terrifying powers had never soothed them enough to allow him true, deep sleep.

Then, at last, the truth and the cold and the need to plot and move in secret and perhaps most of all the clicking - the incessant, sharp clicking and cutting of the Casket of Ancient Winter’s shards moving in his heart in a way to make itself more comfortable made sleep all but an impossibility.

So, though he was fully a king now, with a million obligations to both his tattered Realm and his own ambitions, Loki lay perfectly still, with his eyes still closed, thinking that perhaps he might even fall asleep again. 

It was possible.

There had been a terribly brief time, a finger snap’s worth between the end of his body changing and tormenting him and his eyes being opened to the pathetic betrayal that was his life when he had been able to sleep. 

A bit.

When he had gone to Vanaheim with his mother again after Diole’s death, when he and Aere had been together again, and then truly together for the first time, they would kiss for hours, leaving each other swooning, hypnotized, drugged. He would stumble to his bed and after easing himself with the help his hand and seidr, he would fall profoundly asleep as if his normally leaping, capering mind was eager to have the night pass quickly so they might be together again that much sooner.

Whilst the night before Loki had not slept as well as he had during those brief, blameless days he _ had  _ slept! When the last pleasure had been wrung from both of their bodies and Aere had been tucked safely against him with her own body soft and her breathing deep, he had felt himself falling and this time nothing caught him.

At some point, she had worked her way out from under his arm and in his sleep he had allowed her to do so, which was to be expected as neither of them was used to having their bed shared. Even at the fiercest point of his infatuation with Nott, he had never permitted her to stay a full night with him. He had always placated her by saying if they were discovered thus - by a gossipy servant or just as likely by Thor who thought nothing of barging into Loki’s rooms unannounced to drag him off to fish or hunt or invade somewhere - it could interfere with their plans.

There was truth to that, even if it was his truth, which was that he simply had not wanted her to be with him when he tried to sleep. He had never wanted anyone with him then. Even now there was a small part of him that felt a  _ wrongness _ …. 

Yet he was too comfortable to leave.

Aere’s warmth could not reach his heart, yet for a little while longer it could offer him rest.

Then, as he found himself more and more awake despite his desires, he became aware that from Aere that there was … nothing. 

No motion.

No sound.

No breath.

No warmth.

Jolting upright, a thrill of what might have been fear had he been still able to feel even that, at the idea that his Jotunn form had injured her or worse, Loki felt a moment of relief that she was not in the bed with him, followed by a moment of confusion that she was nowhere in her little room. 

Nor in the closet he’d filled with gowns, nor the convenience room, nor was she using the bathing chamber.

There was a sensation, something like to anxiety, something like to anger, that scraped softly down his spine and sent the shards within his heart clicking. Pressing the heel of his hand to his heart, Loki pushed until he felt numb. 

He needed to dress and see to matters. The first day of his reign would set the tone for all of those to follow. 

Aere’s guards could find her, or they could die.

Had Aere not previously taken the Bifrost, traveling through the Elven path might have been terrifying. There was a similarity to them, though only in the way that racing on a warhorse through a dark, unknown forest could be compared to taking a slow amble upon a gentle, aging mare along a country lane. 

The mad exhilaration of the Bifrost was not for her. 

Madness now frightened her and exhilaration was a lie that people told themselves when they were in danger and did not want to admit that they were afraid. 

She knew that it was not truly a path that she was walking upon, with gently worn rocks warmed by the sun beneath her thin slippers, flanked by a balmy, golden light that was as impenetrable as a wall of iron. It was the illusion that her mind - with the help of the old magic that had created the paths - had decided to accept so that she might not go mad at the yawning nothingness that she was, in fact, walking through. 

Her feet felt the rock, hard enough to jar her sore body, which in turn was eased somewhat by the warmth from that light that she could see, even though it was not actually there, and thus she would not go mad.

She wondered if time passed here. Or if it passed too quickly. It seemed like she had already been traveling for so long just to get through that door and now she still had to walk.

Not that the Elven road lacked for danger, most especially when traveling upon it alone, barely dressed, taking a route based on a dimly recalled book that Diole had read from, filled with legends of her kind and pictures that gleamed and moved. 

Her favorite stories had been about a dark elven magician, Reynart the Hob, a troublemaker who had to flee the court of the Dökkálfar after luring the queen away from the king. Aere had suspected even as a child that Diole was changing some of the words in that story, that there were adult things within it she was not supposed to know. 

Surely one would not be exiled for merely stealing a dance from a willing woman? 

Driven from the underground Realm, and equally unwelcome in the lands of the Ljósálfar where they lived under the sun, Reynart had nowhere to settle, so he became a wanderer and forged the paths of the Elven kind. Each Realm held many planets, so to travel from one to the next and not get lost, Reynart used his powerful seidr to forge sigils for every one of them, the most important of which were reproduced in Diole’s book. Drawing the sign of a given place upon a doorway - some of which were mirrors, others of which were waterfalls, or caves, or even actual doors - would take you to that destination. Supposedly.

Her feet hurt. And she itched.

For it had been long ages since any of the elves had traveled the way she did now. For the consequences of getting even one line or curve wrong were too dangerous and dire when other roads were possible.

Since it was a children’s’ book of stories it only had pictures of those sigils that led to the chiefest world of each Realm. Aere would lay upon the floor, the book open, and would trace her fingers over and over on those golden seals. 

When the path had opened before her she had stepped through without hesitation, not due to any great confidence in her memory from so many, many years before. She would rather be caught by the creatures that hunted any being unfortunate enough to get lost in those empty places that the path traversed than go back to Loki. 

Each of the sigils, Diole had told her, was not just a map to a place, it was a picture of where you were trying to end up. Asgardia’s flat plain and gleaming mountains turned into straight and jagged lines, like soldiers ranked and ready to march off of the edge of life. Vanaheim was a knotted, mottled snake that ate its own tail. 

Jotunheim was as intricate as the structure of a crystal.

Nidavellir looked like a plan to a great machine that would do a dreadful thing.

Midgard as a circle, twinned about with curves that when she was older she realized were waves from endless oceans, coils that were the courses of rivers, turnings that were formed by the endless brooks and streams, circles and ovals, closed off rounds that were lakes and ponds and even great seas. 

Her world.

A place that for all of its forests and deserts, frozen wastes and soft fields, mountain ranges and steppes, was more than anything water. They said, in those few other books she found that had more than a few words to say about it that Midgard’s namesake planet was the bluest world in all of the Realms.

As a girl Aere would bathe in the stream that crossed Frigga’s estate, swimming faster than any of the other servants, and think perhaps being from such a place made her akin to a mermaid. Though the mermaids she had met were generally rude and full of themselves, never willing to speak to her no matter how polite she was in turn. 

It would be nice to swim now, she thought. To swim home.

She stumbled over her own feet. She was very tired.

And thirsty. There had been a little water in the room that had been made for her and she had needed most of it to clean herself. 

It hurt between her legs now. 

After a while, she let the cloak she had stolen fall away. Though heavy, with a large, elaborate clasp it made no sound when it dropped and Aere knew that if she were to look back it would not be there. Being an inanimate thing it had no illusions to sustain it.

That made her laugh.

She laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed until her guts ached from it and her mouth ached straight down to her throat.

How could  _ anything _ have fewer illusions than she did? Delusions, really, were what she had had for so long, delusions and illusions and now they had been so utterly stripped from her it was amazing that she had enough belief left to keep her safe on this rickety old path. She should fall right through it into the maw of the universe.

Instead, she fell through the doorway onto Midgard.

It was night there, so dark she could not see her hand before her face, and she was too tired to move even if she could. So, rather wishing she had kept the cloak after all, for though it was warmer than Jotunheim the ground was hard, Aere pulled her knees to chest and slept.

Loki dismissed his advisors from the audience chamber within his personal rooms, such advisors as they were, including Nott who looked as if she very much wished to join him for the night. 

She would be better off learning to live with disappointment sooner rather than later. 

When they were gone he also dismissed his attendants.

It had not been as productive of a day as he had hoped, nor was it a total waste. The vassal rulers of the few planets still habitable within the Realm - Utgard, Thrymheim, Mímisbrunnr - had presented themselves to him. All three were quite young, as he had learned that overthrowing one’s sire when they started to show any physical weakness was one of the many grand traditions of his people

Two of them, the rulers of Thrymheim and Mimisbrunnr, were massive, like creatures hewn of rock with the brains to match.

But the young Jarl of Utgard, Skrýmir, was made of finer stuff. He was still clearly a warrior at the start of his prime, not merely strong but quick of both body and thought. When the three of them had offered the ritual words that bound them to his service Loki watched him the most carefully. There was nothing about his manner or his words during the ceremony, or at the feasting afterward, or when he and the others were added to the king’s council for the remainder of their visit to Jotunheim, that was not what could be expected of a young, Jotnar warrior. 

He was brash, eager for war, boastful, and claimed he himself would take Thor’s head and lay it at Loki’s feet.

Actually, it would seem that Thor would need a vastly larger number of heads than he currently possessed, as Loki had been promised the same offering by at least three dozen other Jotunns in the scant day he had been king. 

But there was a difference when Skrýmir made such a boast. Unlike the rest, he _ knew _ he was lying. Everything he said, or at least everything he said in the way that he said it, was a lie. The Jarl of Utgard was not stupid, he simply pretended to be so.

Not stupid, but ill-informed, Loki thought as he sat down in his cold bed-chamber to stare out at the bleakness of the mountains and the black night. Skrýmir was clearly used to effortlessly deceiving the various and sundry idiots that surrounded him on a daily basis, and therefore thought that he was clever enough to lie to the God of Lies.

Loki would allow the young Jarl to keep believing that for a while longer, whilst he studied him and decided if he would be a worthy ally, or was too dangerous to live. 

There was a knock upon his chamber door.

“Enter,” he did not bother to stand or even turn. It was no doubt Aere’s guards, back with her finally. 

They would be punished and replaced for losing her to begin with, and the punishment would be that much harsher as it had taken them an entire day to fetch her back from wherever she had secreted herself in his dismal fortress. And for her punishment, she would have to sleep in his bed rather than her own.

He flicked an eye towards the monstrous thing, with its ugly tapestry hangings, showing the various murderous acts of his ancestors, the mattress high on a plinth that it was probably harder than, with no pillows and one thin sheet, since Jotnar king’s had no need for softness, luxury, or comfort. 

Or taste, he thought disdainfully.

Still, he did not want her to become sick. He would allow her to bring one of the furs from her little room and she could sleep curled up beneath it at the foot of the bed.

When the guards admitted that they had searched everywhere in the main part of the redoubt and could not find her Loki considered killing them. It would be the work of less than a thought to slit both of their throats and toss them from the window. 

No, the lesson that would teach would not be the lesson that he wanted his people to learn.

Instead, he stated, “Then you will search the ruined part of the castle, and if she is not there you will search outside of the walls, and then the rest of the continent, and then the planet, and then the Realm,” his voice remained calm, disinterested, whilst he moved his hands, gathering seidr with idle gestures. 

They stood perfectly still, not looking at each other, not able to meet his eye.

“If she is not within this Realm then you will move on the Svartalfheim. If she is not there, then you will search Alfheim. Then Nidavellir, then Niflheim, then Vanaheim,” he rose and walked toward them, a slow amble as he continued, conversationally, with just the slightest tremor in his hands from the power he held there.

One of the guards took a half a step back before he steeled himself.

“Then Vanaheim, then Asgard, then dead Midgard, then Muspelheim. Every planet within every Realm. You shall search, and you shall seek, and until you find Aere you shall never stop, not even for the rest of the grave.” 

The seidr in Loki’s hands moved viper quick through the air, biting deeply into their flesh, burrowing into their hearts. As they writhed, screaming on the floor at his feet, he cocked his head, frowning until they finally fell to whimpering. 

“This is the geas of your king. Send someone to fetch the queen for me before you leave.”

When they had stumbled from the room, Loki closed his eyes and reached out to the link between himself and Aere’s collar. 

She was very far away. But alive. 

Good. He would let her run for a time. Perhaps it was better that he tamed his unruly kingdom first, so he would have more time to tame his unruly lover at his leisure.

The shards within his heart clicked and clattered their assent and, gritting his teeth against the pain, Loki went to bathe.

  
  
  
  
  



	14. The Last Child of Midgard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aere goes home.

The Legend of Midgard-that-Was...

The battle raged.

Across the uncultivated plains and fertile fields, upon the icy oceans and mountains, wherever there was space to fight the great armies of Jotunheim and Asgard met, their ancient hatreds stoked by the personal spite between their kings.

Laufey, who wanted it as a garden of blue and green from which to pluck food and slaves, and Odin, who wanted to prove he could defeat the enemy that had defied his father Bor, and his father’s before him.

Beneath the feet of their armies Midgard shuddered and roiled, as if trying to shake them loose, whilst her children, from human to insect, from beasts of the sea to creatures of the sky - died in droves, whether they hid or fought. Small villages were wiped from their mother’s surface. Even the great cities of the Realm - Damascus, Aleppo, Plovdiv, Hangzhou, and all of their sisters - were no longer refuges for those who fled the killing fields.

Their fortresses fell.

Their towers burned.

Growing things were charred black with magical fire or killing frost.

Gargantuan surges of mystic power, out of the control of their originators, grow feral and untamable. The few mortals capable of using magic themselves were able to do little more than hold back those raging forces long enough to allow others to run, only to then be consumed themselves when their strength failed. 

Stone melted.

Ice climbed to scrape at the rim of the sky.

And then, within a still, small circle in the center of the hardest fought skirmish, Asgard and Jotunheim’s kings, who had each felled scores of each other’s subjects and those mortals unfortunate enough to be in their way, met.

For a moment they were both stunned that after so long they had finally achieved their meeting. Both stopped, heaving breaths making it impossible for either to speak. Odin was blank-eyed, his hair, even his impenetrable flesh, dripped with sweat like rain, his mighty war-helm and coat of plates long since dispensed with so he stood, Gungnir clenched in one fist, the Oversword in the other. Above him, Muninn and Huginn circled, screaming defiance, swooping down to pluck the eyes of unwary Jotnar. 

Laufey, the Casket of Ancient Winters, the great weapon of his people, held before him, was cold enough that the very air froze about him, so little could be seen of him through its mists. He was little more than a shadow with scorching eyes.

Forests turned to kindling and scrapings.

Wracked oceans splashed on beaches that had fused to glass.

They looked upon each other, knowing that for all that separated them, they had one thing in common with each other that they had with none of their own people. 

They could stop the killing. 

For a moment there was silence between them and one of them might have spoken. Might have extended if not the hand of peace then at least that of sanity. 

As with all things, the moment passed, and with its passing, the homeworld of the Realm of Midgard passed as well, though not so quietly.

None on either side of the battle were ever able to say what precisely happened, for all were too busy killing and trying not to die in turn. Indeed, so horrible was the cracking of the Casket and the uncontrolled unleashing of the Odinforce that none of the soldiers, even the most depraved, who survived did not claim to know what passed between Laufey and Odin. 

For there are some truths so horrible for even the most horrible amongst us cannot think of a convincing story tell about them.

All, however, agreed upon one thing, that the breaking of the Casket and thus the breaking of Midgard did not happen with one crack but with eight. 

The first was a loud sundering, the second a sharp breaking of ice, the third a shrieking splinter of glass, the fourth a heavy rupture of flesh, the fifth an unclosable breach of reality, the sixth a scraping fracture of bone, the seventh a massive split of rock, and the eight was the gentle tap of something very tiny and easily lost falling to the ground.

Nine shards of Casket fell apart in Laufey’s hands. A corrosive miasma flooded out of it, whilst the aftershock of its breaking knocked over giant, mortal, and god alike, as if a massive arm had swept over a playing board. 

That power, bolstered by that of the Odinforce, by the wild magics that ran amok, was unconfinable. Those benighted beings who were on the other side of the pretty blue world were able to watch its moon tear asunder. Her death throes made sea where there had been land and land where there had been sea. 

Some of those who had fallen rose to flee, and some fell to never rise again, whilst others fell and fell and may be falling still.

For Midgard, too, was broken in eight places.

Now…

Aere woke, though she did not agree to it, but there were noises.

Sitting up, slow and aching, she wished now that she’d been able to keep the cloak that she’d dropped along the Elven road. It was bitterly cold. She gave an ugly chuckle at the idea she was colder here than she had been on Jotunheim. Whatever protections the shackle Loki had placed on her offered there did her no good here.

The sky above her had so few stars. Only a few distant, faint pin-pricks alleviated the smothering dark. Without them, she would have feared she had gone blind. Raising a hand, it only became visible to her when it was practically touching her face. 

Stretching out, Aere could feel nothing about her. 

But in the darkness there were noises. 

Awake now, she knew what they were. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms about them, shuddering in discomfort and fear. 

A chittering sound nearby. A soughing that did not come from the branches of a tree. Long scrapes of bone across rough stone. Countless, throatless wails.

Aere had never traveled to Hel but she had been raised in and amongst witches. She knew when she was surrounded by the lonely dead. 

If she’d had salt or iron, or any number of herbs, or even something to scrape runes upon the ground with, she knew a dozen ways or more to protect herself from them … then she remembered. Perhaps Loki’s  _ gift _ would be able to protect her after all. 

Wrenching at it, her eyes watering from the pain, she reopened the wounds that he had half-healed. Working quickly, for she knew that the warmth of living blood called to the dead, she gathered some onto her fingers, writing blind, in a circle.

Now she could hear teeth clacking. Massive teeth.

_ Please, gods _ , she thought,  _ let it be a circle _ . She turned and turned, dipping into her blood, sketching quickly, unable to see if she was making any mistakes, drawing the sigils that the Vanir used to mark the graves of those who died by violence to keep them from rising. Her knees scraped, and soon her fingertips were bleeding on their own, and she was in a cloud of mist made by her heavy breathing. 

When the first thing found her, Aere’s mind was racing. Would the same magic that stops the Vanir dead do any good on the dead of Midgard? Had she left gaps in the circle? Or had she over-written parts of the circle, making smudges that were as good as gaps? Then there was the sound of bone feet clattering on the ground, of bone hands swiping and reaching through the cold air. 

Making herself very small, Aere waited, thinking that if she were to die here no one would ever know. 

The sounds it made when it found her was echoed and answered by the chittering and the scraping and the wails, now all around her and ever closer. Then they stopped, but she could feel them all around her, so many of them. There were only the smallest sounds from them. A shuffle, a shifting, a movement of air, as if they circled her circle and swayed.

“I was Noma…“ the voice was like dead leaves being softly crumbled. “... I lived with my father and five brothers … the giants stole them all and I hid in the hay, but I died too.”

“I was Vedastus…” the voice was a stone falling into a well. “...when the gods came, I thought them angels of the Lord and I sang psalms in their praises, but their magic blew down the walls of the monastery like twigs before a gale.”

“I was Jadwiga…” the voice was strong, and angry. “...and I killed a hundred gods and a hundred giants before they broke the world.”

Shuang was killed fleeing a burning city. Anir fell in battle, all of his family conscripted by the Jotnar. Kanontienentha had grabbed her infant brother and ran when the moon broke and they drowned upon what had been dry land. A hundred dead creatures told her their stories and then finally rested. 

When the too-hot sun rose Aere was alone on a blasted plain, with no shelter or water in sight. 

Rising wearily, she started to walk with the sun to her back rather than in her eyes. Loki may have kept the truth from her about her world for who knew how long, but when he had not lied. Aere wondered if that was comfort or not. She was so thirsty she couldn’t tell if she was hungry as well.

Taking off the overdress to tie around her head and mouth, she climbed a long sloping stone and reached the top to see….

Not making much distance, she wore through the soles of the little slippers quickly, the black lava rock tore them to silk shreds in little time. The calloused bottoms of her feet were hardier by far. At one point a needle-sharp bit of rock worked its way into her heel, but she kept walking, having no way to pull it out again. Eventually it stopped hurting, or the other little bits of stone had deadened her to the pain. As long as she wasn’t bleeding she didn’t care.

The top of the rise was flat and ended in a sharp drop down who knew how far onto yet more of nothing.

The sun was high, so she sat and licked the sweat from her arms, knowing the salt would dry her mouth, but that it was better not lost. 

Where was she going now, at any rate? 

Taking up one of those tattered slippers, she fanned herself weakly and thought. As much as she did not wish to, she wondered what Loki would do at a moment like this, with all hope lost and no resources. 

He would retreat, recoup, find a way, and then it came to her. Much as she did not want to, she knew it was her only choice.

Careful, she unwound the overdress, using rocks to flay open its seams with what felt like the last of her strength, until it became a flag. Torn, stained with blood and sweat, the last flag of Midgard, flown by it’s last child. 

Then she lay down to wait. She was too tired for anything else.

Had she never heard or seen the Bifrost before Aere might have thought that her home Realm was trying to kill her in a new, more directly violent way, other than by starvation, thirst, burning sun, and freezing night. Indeed, she might have welcomed that death, but for those voices she heard in the dark.

For every one of them, she wanted to live.

Rather, from its scintillating light Thor strode, Mjolnir in hand, face scowling as he barked, “Where is he?” 

Aere lifted her head from the ground and laughed, “Loki? Sitting upon his throne planning your doom, your highness. Yours and your father’s and all of Asgard’s.” She pushed herself up to sit and gestured weakly at the emptiness that surrounded him. “And seeing King Odin’s work, I’d be inclined to watch from a comfortable seat. But it will cost too much innocent blood. So take me to your mother. She and I have a long-overdue reckoning.”

Thor looked down at her, his eyes horrified, “What happened to you, Aere?” he asked, his voice now gentle as he reached down to pick her up. 

There were scores of creatures that would have given a year of their lives to be in the God of Thunder’s strong arms. 

Aere was indifferent, other than being comforted to know he would never drop her.

“Love,” she told him, and then Heimdall sent the Bifrost.


	15. Things That Are Broken

Loki was displeased with the latest report from some few of the agents he and Nott had tasked with searching for the last few shards of the Casket. 

The two dark elves were arrogant creatures, as was typical for their kind, yet they had the wit to not meet his eye as they reported on their inabilities. So did the massive Corel tracker they employed. It’s snake-like head hung low, as it shivered under its heavy jacket. The air of Jotunheim did not agree with the cold-blooded creature, and it’s forked tongue flickered in distress as Loki’s queen berated them for their incompetence.

Leaving Nott to it, her normally husky tones rang high and irritable all of the way to the lofty ceiling of the long-disused receiving room they’d had reopened for such meetings, Loki sat back on the chair - the only one in the barren room - that had been brought in for his use and brooded. 

Like most of the rest of his redoubt, this room showcased not only the dismal esthetic of the Frost Giants, but how low their fortunes had fallen. Toying with a bit of leather that frayed on the arm of his chair, Loki tried to make himself care about … anything.

Nott prowled around their agents, her beautiful body dwarfing the elves, her fury making the Corel shrink further into itself, though its head still nearly brushed one of the dark, glass lamps that hung about the room, offering only a cold light. Her snarl was nearly erotic. 

But then, she took  _ great _ pleasure in both giving and receiving chastisement, Loki thought to himself, bored. 

There was a niggling thought that he should not be bored at this moment. He should be furious, anxious, concerned. He should be the one taking these underlings to task, instilling fear within them. Not that they did not fear him.

Without question the three had been relieved when he had left Nott to it, their dread of him was so clear. And yet he could not say why. Not once had he raised his voice to them or even offered anything in the way of direct or veiled threat. 

The Corel’s slitted eyes were on him, even as it hunched its shoulders at Nott’s words and raised fists. 

Tilting his head, Loki met its gaze. Standing, he walked towards it, holding those viperish eyes as if the creature were hypnotized by its fear of him. Putting up a hand to still his queen, he then leaned close to the Corel, that now shuddered more from his proximity than from cold. 

“Why have you failed?” he asked.

“Gr-great king,” its voice was but a faint hiss as its mouth moved to form Jotnar, a language it was not formed to speak, “the Shards are not…” it tried to find a word, it’s fear and the structure of how it thought confounding it’s attempts.

“Sire,” the less cowed of the two dark elves spoke, her voice deferential, “if I might?”

Loki inclined his head slightly, not looking away from the Corel. He was mildly interested in if it could cry, for its fear of him was such that it seemed as if it wanted to weep under his regard.

“Xiix has tried to explain to us several times that there is something in the nature of the pieces of the Casket that … it says they slip from scent and taste. A Corel is able to scent one micron of, say, a stone in a field of other stones, when it is within the same planetary system. Even the emptiness between worlds is not as powerful as their sensitivity. Xiix says it is only able to find where the Shards have been by sensing them as an emptiness. In this case, emptinesses that are moving.”

Moving closer to the creature, Loki watched it fight to not shy away from him. He could tell that it trembled to with a need to flee on its ponderous legs. 

He spoke to the elf, “So you are saying that the Shards are … traveling? That they are likely in someone’s keeping?”

“One of them, Sire. The others we have yet to discover.”

Nott, disliking that matters had been taken from her hands, interjected to the other elf, “If you can track the whereabouts of two then why have you not gone after them?”

Before that could be answered, Loki reached out toward the Corel. 

With a terrible moan, it jerked away, it’s lashing tail knocking its confederates over, and it nearly trampled Nott as it stepped back and back, ponderous and slow as Loki followed its steps. Jotnar forgotten in its distress, it hissed its native language wildly as he cornered it beside a cracked window overlooking the dreariness of his Realm. 

It looked at that window and seemed prepared to jump.

Yes, it  _ could  _ weep, Loki noticed.

“What does it say?” he asked, finally a little interested.

The other elf spoke, her voice unsteady as she rose to her feet, “That … that it can see you, but it cannot scent you, cannot taste you. Like a … ghost? No, that is not the word. A nothingness?”

“A void?” he offered.

“Sire…” she refused to answer, which answered him fully.

“It is a wise thing,” he turned from the Corel, that now started to sob in relief. “I believe, before I interrupted, that my queen was about to ask where you lost track of the shard that is in motion?”

“Asgard, sire.”

It took little enough time for the healers of Asgard to mend most of Aere’s injuries - the lacerations on her feet and fingers, the mild infections she had in both those places and in more intimate locations, due the state she had been in after she had … after she’d had Loki, for she refused to think of it in any other way than  _ her _ having _ him, _ using him and then leaving so soon after, with no time for niceties. Beyond that, a hot bath, then two days of sleep punctuated by rising for meals and then pushing herself back to bed.

A luxurious bed, to be certain. Aere had been too exhausted for anything other than a mild surprise when she’d been given a set of lavish rooms rather than being taken to the servants’ quarters. Not that it mattered. In the state she was in, she could have slept on the ground and as long as it was not infested with vipers or insects, or the chattering dead, she would have slept soundly.

Anything to give her body a chance to recover.

Anything that would keep her from thinking too much.

However, there comes a time when any being fortunate enough to be healthy and strong, and accustomed to physical work, can no longer make themselves lay a-bed, even if her spirit was otherwise inclined. 

It hurt her bones to be so still.

The room was all pale gold and creamy white, with the elegant, chilly spareness that was the signature of much of Asgardian style for so long, save for their feasting rooms. Those spaces of dark wood, roaring fires, and comradery were unchanged from the days when the Aesir influence was not imperial in nature. Only the great bed, a few chairs and a table near the fireplace, and a carved wood chest were dotted around the bedchamber. 

At least it would be easy to keep clean, Aere sniffed. 

Within the closet there were gowns and robes and cloaks, more shoes and boots than any reasonable person could wear, hunting garments, and all of the other things needed by a lady of stature. 

There was too much green amongst the garments for her liking. Though they were beautiful and lovely to touch, they were fanciful and romantic and far from her mood. She found a black dress and tore off the gold around the neck, and a pair of shoes that were big enough for her still swollen, painful feet.

The bathing chamber had every manner of soaps and oils and salts and on and on. 

Clean, smelling of flowers, and dressed, Aere knew that she would have to speak to Frigga, perhaps even the King. She had been on Jotunheim, had seen much and learned something of the plans of the new king. It was more than possible she would be executed for how she planned to answer any questions she might be asked.

When the guards finally came for her, they took her not to the throne room, where she might expect an interrogation or perhaps a punishment to be handed down by a stern and furious Odin, nor to the Queen’s private chambers, where she might again be gently coerced by Frigga. Rather, she was led through the palace, out onto the grounds where a thin snow fell, and into another building.

The cold should have bothered her, but Aere barely noticed. If it were due to her recent time amongst the Frost Giants, or because of Loki’s shackle around her neck she couldn’t say. 

Asgard’s great feasting hall was dark, which she found comforting after the ever-present gleam and gold of the palace. The massive fires that would be lit when the King celebrated the victories of his warriors or gave hospitality to his guests, were dimmed. Only a smallish brazier warmed and illuminated an inglenook, showing the composed faces of their Majesties, and the far less calm face of Prince Thor. 

Seated farther away, so they might not overhear, His Highness’s four regular companions waited. Of them, only Hogan betrayed no anxiety.

Stopping herself, for she did not wish to offer any reverence to these people, though years of training and service that were ingrained in her muscles and carved into her bone, Aere won the fight to keep herself from giving a deep bow, even as bile burned her throat. 

“Aere, please,” Frigga said, gesturing to an open space on the velvet cushioned bench she rested upon. 

“No.”

Thor frowned at her, as did the king. “My queen has offered you an honor,” Odin said, his voice ponderous and grave.

The words spilled out of her, and she could hear Loki in them.

“Her Majesty has kept me as half slave, half pet when I should have long since been dead, because of the wars between your people and the Jotnar. It seems to be a habit with the royal family. When Loki and I became close did you wonder if it was because we had so much more in common than we knew?”

Frigga gave the softest gasp, her eyes dropping.

“That is enough!” Odin stood, his massive, old body dwarfing her. Thor growled a bit, his hand tightening on Mjolnir. The queen put a quelling hand upon her husband before he could speak further, and gave her son the same look that she had given him for centuries when he was about to be rash. 

“Aere has been through ordeal after ordeal, each one of which relates to some ugliness or grave misjudgment on the parts of our family, and Laufey’s, neither of whom she was born to be a subject of.”

Odin stopped and sat again. His look was calmer, but darker, and his eye studied Aere closely. Perhaps had her life been different of late she might have felt flayed by the All-Father’s power and scrutiny, but Loki’s flensing of her soul and the long night she had spent on Midgard left his regard with little power over her. Though he could kill her as easily as she might pull a weed, he could not make her bend. 

“What do you want with me?” she asked. “The king of Jotunheim’s plans? I do not know them, other than in the vaguest ways that you might guess at. He wishes to see Jotunheim triumphant over all, for Asgard to fall, to create an empire. How he can do these things, I have no idea.”

“Aere,” Frigga’s voice was so soft, as if she were afraid of her own words, “...how is he?”

Odin looked away. 

Thor made a sound of frustration and stalked over to Sif and the Warriors Three, but did not speak nor sit, only stood away, refusing to hear what she might say.

“Loki?” Aere could not help it, a little laugh, shrill and nervy, burst from her, turning and turning to take in all of them, her voice raised, “Loki? Loki is no more, my Queen, your child, your brother, your perhaps friend, your stolen toy, your war prize, your student, your shadow, your-.” She stopped herself, swaying slightly, “My closest friend, my love, my other self, is gone. I do not know what walks around wearing his face and blue flesh and the crown of Jotunheim, with a mind that knows nothing but ice and ambition, but Loki, who I knew as well as I knew myself, who knew me,” she hit herself on the chest hard enough to bruise, “is gone.”

She sat down on one of the chairs. She did not want to share her grief with these important people, some of whom had a hand in creating all of this pain for her, and all of whom had a part in making Loki as he was today. 

They. And Nott. 

Swallowing, her neck and jaw tense with emotion, Frigga reached to the small table at her side, opening a small wooden box. 

The pleasant warmth of the room dropped as coldness erupted from it like steam from a geyser, clouding the air. Aere knew that cold. It was the cold of Jotunheim. A cold that had never known warmth. The others all shivered against it, but for her it was no worse than a spring breeze.

Wrapping her hand several times in her silken scarf first, Frigga removed a blade of blue-white glass from the box. “Do you know what this is?”

The thing seemed to pull at her. Before she could think Aere was on her feet and back at the queen’s side, taking it from her. There was a shudder of revulsion rippled down her arm and across all of her skin, like she had touched something that was at once both galvanic and dead. The feel of it was terribly wrong, and she found that she wanted to keep it always.

Odin made a half-strangled sound, “Your ha-” He stopped, his eye narrowed, “Your flesh. The cold does not wither nor burn it…”

Aere idly touched the shackle on her neck, all of the while holding the glass and walking closer to the brazier so she could watch the firelight through it. Each flame now burned blue, as if they would freeze rather than warm. There was a mesmeric quality to its curve and the milky striations within it. When she touched the tip to the white-hot wood in the brazier they went cold in a puff of steam.

“I saw Nott, the one who is Loki’s queen now,” that pronouncement caused sounds of confusion and outrage, though she did not bother to look at who had what response, “bury one of these in Loki’s heart. It did not kill him.” Indeed, it had made him stronger, even larger, impervious to unhappiness or much of anything else it had seemed. 

For a moment she considered driving this one into her own chest, not to die, but to-. 

She did not know why she wanted to do such a thing and in questioning the wanting, the moment passed, though ugly allure of the glass did not. “The Casket of Ancient Winters. That is what this glass was from. No,” she corrected herself, “it is not glass, but ice.”

“How have you heard of such a thing?” Odin asked.

“The ghosts of my dead told me many stories about the great battle between Odin  _ Herteitr _ and Laufey _ Grimmur Framherji  _ and how they broke my world.”

Before Odin could roar or rage, Frigga stood and took Aere’s free hand. “When Ymir the first king of Jotunheim lay dying, the largest and most powerful of their kind, they feared what would become of him, so he charged his queen to cut out his still-beating heart and place it in a casket of unmeltable ice, so that he would ever be with them, to protect them. I believe that if Loki should have all of the pieces, he would become a kind of living casket for his  _ own  _ heart. Combining his already great magic, with Ymir’s … the destruction he could cause would be incalculable.” 

“Should he find the last of the shards,” Odin’s voice rumbled deep in his chest, “he could encase the Realms in ice.”

“He could freeze the fires of Muspelheim,” Thor muttered. 

“And?” Aere asked, not giving the shard back, but no longer finding it so entrancing.

“And any chance of his being restored to us would be gone,” Frigga answered.

For a moment none of them spoke, and then finally, Aere shook her head at Frigga, her eyes closed, “He will never be restored. Not truly. Even if every bit of this thing were plucked from his heart - somehow without killing him, but I know enough of magic from you and Diole that this has now given his pierced heart a kind of false life - he is not the same. Knowing what he knows, what lies were told to him and about him, has changed him just as much as this has,” she shook the shard, squeezing it so it cut her a little.

The pain of it made all of the tiny injuries the healers had not seen to - from her foot to her knees to her still tender throat - twinge. 

Frigga turned away in shame, Odin in stubborn pride, and Thor-

Aere could see from Thor’s face that he had  _ not _ known. That for him, too, knowing the truth about his brother was a wound.

“Moreover, I cannot forgive him or any of you,” she said to be cruel, though that made it no less true.

With a soft, soft sound, Frigga knelt, taking Aere’s free hand, pressing her forehead to the back of it. “Yet will you help us try?” 

Thor and Odin surged forward, as did Sif and the Warriors Three, with even mild Hogan showing outrage, all were shouting, beseeching the queen to stand, that they did not need the help of a housemaid.

Ignoring all of the noise about her, the thrumming of the shard that seemed excited by the chaos, the pain in her heart, and her own good sense, Aere closed her eyes, “I knew I was a fool. Yet I cannot believe I am this much a fool.” 

That night, whilst feasting with his Jarls and the greatest warriors of their warbands, Loki felt a sharp twinge in his heart as the shards danced and cut within him.

For a moment, the pain was almost sweet. It reminded him of when he’d had to say goodbye to Aere after they had fallen in love. How intense it had been and he had loved every bit of it, had held it to him like a prize, because she had been the one to inspire it in him. He felt that now. Not the memory of it, but the actual feeling. 

The luscious ache of knowing Aere was far away from him, but that he would have her back. 

Then as quickly as it came, it passed, gone so completely he could not even mourn it, especially as it had left cold, absolute knowledge in place of feeling. 

Loki smiled into his raised wine-cup, calculating. 

Aere was on Asgard and she near or even possessed the shard that he knew was there, he knew through the connection of her collar and his sensitivity to the pieces of the Casket.

Odin, ever practical, and Frigga, ever hopeful, would have to find the last missing pieces before he did, and who better to hunt for them than that known huntsman, his brother, and Aere, who knew Loki better than anyone?

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hnefatafl is referred to as Viking Chess. A number of boards and pieces have been found, but no one is certain of the exact rules though various ones have been created based on what is known about it.
> 
> Bjarn-dýr byrdh is my made up name for a Norse game referred to as 'birthing the bear' where in someone tried to worm/force their way out from between two other people. It is claimed that it helped warriors with agility and strength.... whatever.


End file.
